WikiLeaks Reveals the Enemy ... and It's Us
White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs faces the WikiLeaks firestorm, 07/26/10. (photo: Getty Images)
Reader Supported News | Perspective
here is the old argument put forth by the National Rifle Association that it is not guns that kill, it is the people who pull the trigger. This, of course, is at best a half-truth. What does the NRA think guns are manufactured for? The downing of clay pigeons? Nonsense. They are made to kill and maim. Be the targets men or lesser animals, be they used in the course of defense or offense, guns are designed and manufactured to inflict deadly harm.
One can say the same thing for armies. They are not put together for marching in parades. They are designed to kill and maim on a large scale. You can change the name of that part of the government that manages professional carnage from the Department of War to the Department of Defense (as the US government did in 1949) but it makes no real difference. Once the military is engaged, the inevitable consequence (and the consequence clearly known to those who run the show) is mayhem. Ask anyone who has gone through basic training about the amount of effort given to learning how not to kill civilians. It will not be insignificant or irrelevant because, unless the fighting is in a desert or on the moon, it is virtually impossible within the framework of modern warfare not to kill non-combatants. Ask a platoon leader what priority he gives to assuring that his targets are not civilians. If the answer is an honest one it will be a rare event when such a consideration even approaches the standard priorities of achieving the mission while "taking care of your men." You might say that this is just how war is. Historically speaking this is true. In terms of ethics it is a flat out indefensible position.
Just how indefensible was revealed this week by the courageous work of WikiLeaks, a website that has carried on the work begun by Daniel Ellsberg when he leaked the Pentagon Papers during the Viet Nam War. This week saw the release of 92,000 records detailing the bloody savagery of American military action in Afghanistan. If one is old enough, this revelation brings on a disturbing episode of deja vu. For those who lived through Viet Nam know that what these records reveal is nothing new. It has all happened before. No doubt it will all happen again. In fact, it must happen again and again as long as war is waged as it is now.
That is why one can only feel nausea when the professionals, from military spokesmen, to "embedded" journalists, to politicians talk of "collateral damage," as if the pulverized bodies of civilians that the US military (and all similar armies the world over) leaves in its wake are somehow accidents. They are not. No matter what the so-called "rules of engagement," the nature of the weapons used and the training of the average enlistee (which emphasizes ever more ruthlessness as one is brought into "special forces") guarantees these civilian deaths. In the modern age of warfare their fate follows like 2+2=4.
Thus, it is significant, and so revealing of our national mentality, that the savagery revealed in the leaked reports is not what most of our leaders are focusing on. Rather, it is the accusation that the reports suggest that the war is being lost. Thus, from the White House to Congress, to the media talk shows, their defense is that this is old data, reflecting the state of the war prior to the president's introduction of a new strategy and a surge in troop strength. While I believe that the war in Afghanistan is, just like Viet Nam, an unwinnable affair, this sort of debate misses the point of these revelations. It is not about winning or losing. It is about utter destruction. It is about the tens of thousands of human beings who have already irredeemably lost this war.
In the United States, war is a massive industry. We ignored Dwight Eisenhower's warning about the growing military-industrial complex and so this vast interlinked network is now one of the foundations of the US economy. The vested interests involved here are of every class and every ethnicity. To rapidly dismantle this complex risks depression for the nation. To come to a clear recognition of this situation is like looking into the abyss. Indeed, the vast majority of people will refuse to look. And they will support the hunting down of those who have invited them to look (Julian Assange, co-founder of WikiLeaks, is now a wanted man). The government will label them traitors, put them in prison and throw away the key.
Frederic Nietzsche tells us the parable of the death of god. A madman shows up in a town one day and proclaims the death of god and identifies the murderers as we the people. The implication here is that the modern age is what really did god in. Moderns have ceased to pay anything but lip service to god and so he, she or it is really just a dead idol. We can extend the parable to ethics. The people at WikiLeaks are the madmen who have come to town to tell us that we have no ethics; that our pitiful claim to be civilized is just an act of self-delusion because the nature of modern warfare has murdered ethics. By the way, in Nietzsche's story the messenger is simply dismissed as insane. As noted above, the WikiLeaks people will have a much rougher time of it.
Finally, on Armistice Day in 1948, a colleague of Dwight Eisenhower, General Omar Bradley, made a speech in which he said "The world has achieved brilliance without wisdom, power without conscience....." It was not a particularly original observation, for in one form or another it has been said many times before and many times since. The implication is that tomorrow will probably look very much like today. And so it will. As a wise swamp possum once observed, "We have met the enemy ... and he is us."
Lawrence Davidson is a professor of Middle East history at West Chester University in Pennsylvania, and author of the works listed below.
Contributing Editor: Logos: A Journal of Modern Society & Culture
http://www.logosjournal.com
"Foreign Policy Inc.: Privatizing America's National Interest"
http://www.kentuckypress.com/viewbook.cfm?Category_ID=I&Group=55&ID=1490
"America's Palestine: Popular and Offical Perceptions from Balfour to Israeli Statehood"
http://www.upf.com/authorbooks.asp?lname=Davidson&fname=Lawrence
"Islamic Fundamentalism"
http://www.greenwood.com/catalog/GR2429.aspx
Keep your eye on the language: When South Africa assigned rights according to race they called it apartheid. When Israel assigns rights according to religion they call it the only democracy in the Middle East.
Reader Supported News is the Publication of Origin for this work. Permission to republish is freely granted with credit and a link back to Reader Supported News.
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Comments
We can see chaos all around as we have lost the sense as to what is right and what is wrong. Morality does not count any more and there is a dearth of sensible leadership all over the world.
Which includes, then as now, those of us who resist. That is our job, and we won't go away either.
We know that the problem is congress - are there no shameable candidates for office!
"Sin Vergüenzas!!!!! "
Kris
There are shameable candidates, but they rarely get elected and it is the problem with the voters who are easily swayed by the media which caters to the basest emotions of greed, envy and fear. They are also too lazy to educated and inform themselves. They have bought the positive thinking mantras and refuse to face the realities and how they are contributing to their own misery and downfall. The most needed reform is the media. Everything else would follow. But not until real journalists are elevated above the bought and paid for purveyors of political porn.
They are still the best, as long as one remembers there are topics that they, too, won't touch. Only those of us who can afford these electronic boxes to read this stuff can really find out what's going on. It's an information blackout.
How that can be described as democracy is beyond me.
What kind of poison has been inserted into our drinking water that most can't seem to see the forest for the trees.
Guy
We must address the imbalance of power in the Senate between the sparsely populated red states and the densely populated blue ones. We do not have "one person, one vote." A voter in Wyoming or Alaska has a great deal more elective power in national elections and the Senate. It is a structural defect in the Constitution and a case should be brought to correct it. Otherwise, the bluish majority needs to organize groups to colonize over-represented states and districts until a better balance is achieved.
Would like to point out that since some of the funds for this professional carnage is obtained from the U.S. taxpayer, the person who files and pays U.S. federal and state income taxes, is, in fact, an "us".
We repeat history.
And the country has been put to sleep.
Foxnews rules; the MSM kneels to the M/IC.
The House and the Senate march in lockstep; The White House pushes the agenda while downplaying the Wikileaks as old news.
The On-Line Alarm Clocks keep ringing, everyone hits the Snooze Button.
Where's my orange Juice?
Armies on the other hand can only exist contingent on two conditions: one, that a vast number of individuals agree to band together to commit murder; and two, that a far greater number of individuals agree to support the murderers. The vulnerability of societies to armies is operative on the very mutable nature of human concepts of ethics. To improve an individual's ethics is to damage the very possibility of war, but you must improve them in action as well as theory by refusing to lend your support. Refuse to follow, morally or monetarily support war or its proponents, abandon pragmatic concepts of political compromise, and you can become part of the solution.
I am still grateful the Army sent me Medic training. To assuage my guilt over being a "trained, professional killer" I worked hard to learn how to save lives and graduated second in a class of 660.
I am still grateful that I was not sent "in country" and did not have to participate in or witness the killing.
In the past: Civil War, World War I, World War II, the enemy was clear because they were wearing uniforms and battles were separate from where civilians lived, which greatly cut down on no-combatant casualties.
Guerrilla war on the other hand is right in the middle of where people live--and they don't have uniforms.
In addition, intentional programs, like the Phoenix program in Vietnam (Google Douglas Valentine), where we killed over 20,000 Vietnamese, and some of our current actions in Afghanistan and Iraq, kill many more civilians in their home countries than necessary.
On the other hand, not one civilian is killed in the US from those wars. Imagine how we'd think of these wars differently if 10s of thousands of US civilians were killed--and on US soil.
Everyone knows it - this is why US$ael is seeking new wars and PROFIT (Korea, Iran, ..) after Afghanistan. There is negotiations with Taliban - Osama will be killed and Kabul will be on its own.
Excellent article by Lawrence Davidson - when we will see this journalism in NYT?
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