Ditz begins: "The tool of choice for occupation forces and tyrants for millennia, the US military has long been loath to engage in an official policy of book burning."

An Afghan brandishes a copy of the Koran allegedly burned by US soldiers in Bagram. (photo: EPA)

Book Burning: A Shift in US Military Policy

By Jason Ditz, AntiWar.com

22 February 12

he tool of choice for occupation forces and tyrants for millennia, the US military has long been loath to engage in an official policy of book burning. In the wake of World War 2, so aware was the US of the stigma surrounding flaming piles of books that officials decided to pulp, but not burn, the massive numbers of German language texts destroyed in occupied West Germany. Book burning was just too powerful a symbol.

Not so today, where Gen. John Allen (the US commander of NATO occupation forces in Afghanistan) formally apologized after the revelation that several Qurans were among the piles of books thrown into a military "burn pit" at Bagram Air Base.

Gen. Allen didn't apologize for burning books, but for burning one particular religious book. Officials insist that the books taken out of the prison library to be destroyed were being used to "fuel extremism" in Afghanistan, and so non-controversial was the decision to burn them that it wasn't even mentioned, officially, until massive numbers of protesters showed up at the front gates. How did we get from there to here?

It is difficult to determine exactly when policies were changed, or how common these official book burnings are, since the same culture of secrecy that led the Pentagon to buy every single copy of a 2010 book by Lt. Col. Anthony Shaffer and burn them all is also keeping them from talking about most cases.

The conclusion, then, is that we don't really know how often the US military hurls books into "burn pits" nowadays. That Allen was only sorry about the Qurans, and only promised to change the policy so they wouldn't be burned in the future speaks volumes, however, about the attitude in command that destruction of written material is now a trivial matter.

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+1 # barbaratodish 2012-02-22 14:35

Instead of burning Korans, the military, especially those from the south, just thought they were melting (CRAYOLA) CRAYONS! Military INTELLIGENCE IS an oxymoron, you know! lol

+12 # Patriot 2012-02-22 22:10

No matter what the excuse, book-burning is censorship, and if we disown the practice of censorship at home, hw little are we qualified to judge what should be censored elesewhere, and from whence do we derive the authority to censor -- at all?

This is repugnant, outrageous, and unacceptable.

+10 # Smiley 2012-02-22 22:28

OMG Fahrenheit 451 is here!

+10 # RLF 2012-02-23 05:20

The stupidity of this move on both sides is just incredible. People that kill for religion are total idiots...and I don't give a s#*t what religion.

+5 # Sensible1 2012-02-23 08:07

Over more than a decade of U. S. aggressive war where countless civilians were silenced permanently from voicing their objections, and numerous others imprisoned without due process, not to mention use of torture on POWs; our leaders have cleared the way for more unrestrained abridgment of our military "Spirit d'Corps" and honor on the battlefield, which we once held to the highest degree than any other nation in the world. That's why Fahrenheit 451 was so famously in contrast with those values. So much for that; 9/11 changed us forever, and they accomplished their goal to destroy our beloved America, at least the way it used to be.

+1 # Kootenay Coyote 2012-02-23 08:36

Evil Piltdown policy.

+5 # Citizen Mike 2012-02-23 08:48

I should like to see the far-right engage in a domestic campaign to publicly burn books to which they object, such as the writings of Darwin, Marx, Sanger, Keynes. Because this would publicly reveal their true nature as fascists closely akin to the Nazis, and further undermine any credibility they might have. Burning books is archetypically un-American, so that is what I would like to see these"patriots" accused of being, in the mainstream press. Fun to watch them try to wiggle out of the shadow of the swastika.

+5 # bluepilgrim 2012-02-23 10:32

They don't burn them. They snatch them out of hands of Tuscon school children and bundle them up in boxes for storage in a warehouse.

http://narcosphere.narconews.com/notebook/brenda-norrell/2012/01/tucson-schools-bans-books-chicano-and-native-american-authors

0 # Annalois 2012-03-23 09:10

This is America they say; Americans do not burn books; America takes care of it's women and are not treated like the Afganistan women. Oh Really?

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