no third solution

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Category Archives: American Politics

America Was Not Established as a Christian Nation

August 23rd, 2010

I heard some idiots talking on the radio over the weekend, probably about some non-Mosque which some brown people want to build on not-Ground Zero. One caller brought out the big guns, citing how America is a Christian nation founded on Christian values and it says so right in the Constitution and Declaration of Independence.

Apparently he has never read either of those documents, but unfortunately these are widely-held (and patently false) beliefs.

The word “God” is entirely absent from the Constitution. So is the synonym “Creator”. And the word “Lord” only appears where the document is dated “in the year of our Lord…”

In the Declaration of Independence, the word “Lord” does not appear, and the words “God” and “Creator” appear only once, respectively:

When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights

I do not know who is responsible for starting this myth which stands in direct contravention to the establishment clause of the First Amendment to the Constitution — so even if the Constitution contained numerous references to the Christian God (it doesn’t), the First Amendment would render those impotent.

Pentagon vs. WikiLeaks: The Big Picture

August 6th, 2010

wikileaksThe other day, an obnoxious Pentagon spokesperson issued formal threats (essentially: destroy everything, or else!) against WikiLeaks, the organization which received thousands of classified documents from Bradley Manning and has since made many of those available for public consumption.

WikiLeaks founder, Julian Assange, responded in an interview on Democracy Now. Amy Goodman, conducting the interview, quoted Admiral Mike Mullen from a news conference earlier in the week

ADM. MIKE MULLEN: Mr. Assange can say whatever he likes about the greater good he thinks he and his source are doing, but the truth is, they might already have on their hands the blood of some young soldier or that of an Afghan family. Disagree with the war all you want, take issue with the policy, challenge me or our ground commanders on the decisions we make to accomplish the mission we’ve been given, but don’t put those who willingly go into harm’s way even further in harm’s way just to satisfy your need to make a point.

Hear? We’re allowed to “take issue with the policy” and “challenge” the tactical decisions made by the commanders, as long as we leave “the mission” out of the equation, because, you see, they’re just following orders (and so should you). But following orders isn’t an excuse.

“Following orders was not an excuse for anyone put on trial in Nuremberg, and it will not be an excuse for you or your superiors, either.” — Andrew Williams (addressing Brigadier General Thomas Hartmann, legal advisor to Guantanamo Bay prison)

About those who “willingly” go in to harm’s way? They would rather be driving their kids to soccer practice, finishing college, working their 9-to-5, etc.  How many would’ve “willingly” gone to fight for Empire if the Pentagon had put a C-130 at every airport in the country with suitable runway and said, “Anyone who wants to go to Afghanistan and fight, the door is open!”? My guess: they wouldn’t fill a high school gymnasium.

Assange points out that when, e.g., Robert Gates or Mike Mullen implies that WikiLeaks and its collaborators might have blood on their hands, that these statements “all together, are designed to distract from the big picture,” which is of course the same big picture which Mullen craftily sidesteps in the blockquote above. The big picture is “the mission” itself, the objective consequences of which include the deaths of 20,000 civilian, non-combatant Afghans.

Mr. Mullen can say whatever he likes about the greater good he thinks he and his forces are doing, but the truth is, they already have on their hands the blood of 4,000 American soldiers, some 20,000 innocent Afghans, and (conservatively) over 100,000 innocent Iraqis. Including “accidents” wherein 150+ children were bombed to death.

Collateral murder, indeed.

Assange and WikiLeaks are exposing the crimes and the criminals like Mullen, Gates, et. Al, who are responsible. If you want to pretend that all that shit never happened, then I guess you can get on your high horse and start spouting off about the “potential” blood Assange might someday be responsible for.  But you’re definitely light-years ahead of him in terms of destroying human lives.

Mr. Mullen & Mr. Gates, You pay lip-service to keeping the troops out of harm’s way, you may fret over tactics, the specific actions you take towards the accomplishment of “the mission you’ve been given”, but tactics do not exist in a fucking vacuum. They exist only in the context of “the mission.”  Every second of your pitiful existence which passes without questioning the morality of the orders you’ve been given, the orders you’ve accepted to undertake, is another second in which you are responsible for the harm those people face, and the harm they may commit.  And if “the mission” is rotten (to the goddamned core), then nothing else matters.

Releasing “secret” military files does not endanger the troops. Putting them in unconstitutional wars and keeping them there for a decade does.

The Real Problem

August 1st, 2010

In my estimation this is the only problem that really matters. It’s all encompassing, and it’s practically insurmountable. Commenter Don sums it up succinctly:

These monsters have done things that can never be undone and the total consequences will never be known.

You’re right, Don, but I will go one further: It’s not just depleted uranium or agent orange or Nigerian oil spills that nobody in the developed world ever hears about or the other explicit (albeit hidden) costs of imperialism. The stockpiles of nuclear and other weapons of mass- and indiscriminate destruction; the use of such weapons including depleted uranium, etc., the de facto strip-mining of the Earth’s resources — these are globally existential threats to peace and humanity.

Most people are probably aware of nuclear stockpiles, that cold war remnant with which nobody knows exactly what to do. But there is a reason you’ve probably never heard about the Nigerian oil spills or countless other exploitations of a people and an ecosystem; a reason you’ve probably never heard much about depleted uranium or white phosphorous. They do not want you to know.

And so you don’t.

These aren’t naturally occurring, rather the people at large were manipulated in to sowing the seeds (which will probably one day become the source of our collective destruction), all of these threats had their genesis in the ruling classes’ interests, as a means towards achieving some outcome they desired, consequences be damned.

The issue is this: There are simply no means available to deal with or to mitigate the loss or potential for loss attributable to  many of the problems that the State has created.  Even if we could abolish the state tomorrow, these problems they created which nobody wanted in the first place, remain.

no third solution

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