War vs. Democracy

Perhaps the most significant revelation in the new leaked documents on the war in Iraq by Wikileaks is the realization that after the controversies regarding Abu Ghraib, Gitmo, and torture, the war was not cleaned up like it was perceived to be after Petraeus took over. Torture was still widespread, though if not carried out directly by our troops on the ground, then indirectly by allied Iraqi forces; the question boils down to whether letting torture take place by turning a blind eye to it, when you have the power prevent it and clearly know that is taking place, is the same as carrying out the torture directly. I think we all know the answer to that, and it is disturbing.

Possibly more significant is the revealed death count of 109,032, with over 60% of those being civilian casualties. And that count is only the deaths that our troops were involved with or came across; I fear that the number is definitely far more when factoring in sectarian violence that our soldiers did not directly encounter, as they obviously can't be everywhere at once. But make no mistake, those casualties are should weigh on our conscience, as well; if we had not come into Iraq, or at least had been better prepared and had realistic expectations, then this country would not become unstable and would not have transformed into a breeding ground for sectarian violence. Iraq would not have broken out into civil war without our invasion.

No, this war has not been a "clean" war. There is no such thing. War is legalized murder of civilians, of children, of mothers. Although these leaks did not break any ground or give us any grand revelations that we perhaps could not have already assumed (as many of us did), they do shine some light and give some clarity to the conflict, as did Wikileaks' Afghan leak. The public needs this clarity, apparently. If we knew the truth, I'm sure none of us would support war. The truth is just so obvious in all cases of war, we all know what war is, but there is this sentiment in America, cleverly crafted by a relentless propaganda campaign by our government and those propaganda machines who support it, that war is different when we wage it. A war for freedom, for peace. But it never is. We all know the truth about war, the horrors are right in front of us to see, but we are completely blind. We should be saying "Never again;" instead we are talking about bombing Iran and taunting North Korea and Venezuela. Do we learn nothing?

The American people need to wake up. We are the only people who can stop these atrocities, and you can bet there will be many and always will be many if we don't. We are amongst the most powerful people in the world. We literally have the power to make or break it. In many countries, people get killed or imprisoned by their government for even suggesting to raise the minimum wage from 30 cents a day to a dollar a day; our freedoms are a true blessing, and also a great source of power to change the status quo. But we never use it. It is true that our voice is relatively small compared to the voice of the corporate world, but our voice is relatively huge compared to the voices of all other peoples of this world. And we are in a position to change things: so many conflicts and so much of the injustice in this world stems from our government. From supporting brutal puppet regimes to crippling any nation who does not subordinate to our interests, indeed you can trace back too many atrocities back to our government. And the very sad fact is that our government claims to represent us and our interests.

Let's show them that we are not going to accept this. This is a democracy, and we need to not only expand our democratic rights domestically, but we need to start being more democratic in our foreign affairs. Whether or not we invade a country should not be up a bunch of corporate sponsored jokers. Whether or not we back a military coup in a country to overthrow a democratically elected leader should not be up to the CIA. These decisions should be up to us: after all, the actions are done in our name.

I think my fellow Americans also need to realize that this culture of secrecy in our foreign affairs is not always ethical or even productive. Yes, journalists should not leak information that they know could possibly negatively impact national security, but we have learned over a very long period time, over and over again, that our intelligence agencies are very likely to classify things for the reason of covering up something embarrassing, something criminal, or most often, something embarrassingly criminal. They are not be trusted at their word, we really have no good reason to. They haven't provided us with a good reason to.

The intelligence agencies have been exposed repeatedly for hiding things from us, the American people, for the sole reason of keeping us uninformed, thus crippling our decision making process. If the American people were informed about the facts leading up to the Iraq war, would we have supported it? Hell no. It wouldn't have even been an issue. I believe, as strong as propaganda is, the facts, if known, will always prevail. That notion may be naive, but we have never had an opportunity to explore it. They have always intentionally kept us in the dark for unsavory reasons.

It has become very obvious that the war making bodies of our government, the intelligence agencies and presidency, view the American public as the enemy. The secrecy and the propaganda seem very much like Reagan's actions in Nicaragua, when the US took over the Nicaraguan airwaves and aired pro-Contra propaganda endlessly and kept Nicaraguan people in the dark as to the reality of the war, which was US state-sponsored terrorism. This should tell us two very important things: the immoral and unethical nature of our policy makers, particularly ones involved with foreign policy, and just how powerful our voice is.

If the CIA is so afraid of our voice as to intentionally mislead us and keep us in the dark in order to work, that should tell us that we are a force to be reckoned with, a force that can transform the staus quo.

That is, if we are to be awakened.

Demand the truth. Demand peace.

There is no such thing as a "clean" war.





Side Note: I had made a post about the Iranian Hikers in September, and I just wanted to say that my views on the topic have changed due to new information leaked in the Wikileaks documents regarding the fact the the Hikers were actually in Iraq and captured by Iranian forces in Iraq; that changes things greatly.

The Juan Williams Controversy

So Juan Williams, an NPR analyst and Fox News contributor, was fired from NPR for making this comment about Muslims:

"I mean, look, Bill, I'm not a bigot. You know the kind of books I've written about the civil rights movement in this country, but when I get on a plane, I got to tell you, if I see people who are in Muslim garb and I think, you know, they're identifying themselves first and foremost as Muslims, I get worried. I get nervous."

First and foremost, I don't believe he should have been fired; so he said something stupid. Everyone does. Obviously NPR was looking for an opportunity to fire Juan, probably due to his affiliation with Fox News. However, the people who are coming to his defense, particularly the ones at Fox News, are arguing on this point. Earlier today, Megyn Kelly was discussing the matter and had on someone or another from CAIR, an Muslim American rights advocacy group that called on NPR to address the problem and to take action against Juan Williams, and instead of arguing the sensible points she decided to try win the battle by trying to lower everyone's IQ a few notches.

Her argument mostly consisted of the fact that most of Americans feel the same way about Muslims and that Juan Williams was just being honest. Her point was that Williams is not a bigot, he was just being honest. I know this doesn't bother the type of viewers who watch Fox, but just it bothers me. I am, maybe foolishly, under the impression that if you honestly think a bigoted thought than it is still a bigoted thought. And that is true no matter how many Americans think the same way, it shouldn't matter either way. I mean for God's sake, at one point in this country, the majority believe that blacks were inferior to whites. The majority can be wrong, and is wrong often. I'm not saying that Juan Williams or the majority of Americans are bigots, but to stereotype all Muslims who dress in "Muslim garb" to be terrorists is, at the very least, discriminatory; undoubtedly. the majority of Muslims, including the majority who dress in religious clothing, are not terrorists.

Megyn Kelly's other point against the CAIR spokesman was some rhetoric about the freedom of speech. Yes, Williams has freedom of speech protected by the first amendment, but doesn't CAIR have freedom of speech as well? Don't they have the freedom to respond to call for action? In fact, as a Muslim American civil rights advocacy group, they wouldn't be doing their duty if they did not respond. However harmless Juan's remarks seemed, they were essentially promoting the use of racial and religious profiling by law enforcement, particularly at airports. Racial and religious profiling are blatant violations of civil rights.

Kelly's argument regarding first amendment rights reminds me of Dr. Laura's claim that her freedom of speech was being attacked when she got fired for saying the N-word like ten times; regardless of CAIR's own freedom of speech to respond, the fact is, people in the media have a right to free speech, but they don't necessarily have a right to free speech on TV or radio; it's not the government who's censoring them, it's always their own network due to pressures from advertisers, and they have the right. No matter how unfair it seems.

Of course, for viewers, CAIR's spokesman was hardly able to make any of these points effectively because of Kelly's tendency for interruptions and incessant ridiculing. Not that I think most Fox viewers would be listening for his points, anyhow.

Was firing Juan Williams unjustified? Hell yes. But not for any other reason than the fact that we all say stupid things sometimes. It is sad that the corporate media has been acting in such a way lately: we've had too many media personalities get fired recently for saying things that are deemed unacceptable. Juan Williams and Rick Sanchez's comments were stupid, yes. Some of the others, however, were making legitimate and thoughtful political statements and their firings did not even warrant more than a couple words by today's major news organizations.


For the record, I do think Juan Williams is probably the most even headed guy there at Fox News (along with Shepard Smith).