Mr. Bageant:
Concerning the letter and your reply in the post "I'm certain of coming economic collapse": I cannot disagree more with the sentiments shared by that letter writer. Why we went into Iraq was to secure, or at least make safe, the ability to access Iraqi oil fields.
To keep Israel safe by removing Saddam? Please. Recall that during the first gulf war, Iraq lobbed missiles (Scuds) which hit Israel. To its credit, Israel refrained from retaliating.
To somehow claim that Israel is responsible for our unjustified invasion of Iraq smacks of anti-semitic crap.
And why do you quote a mother of a man who founded the Nazi party in Germany? Your point being what? That maybe we need a little national socialism to keep AIPAC in check? That we Americans are worse than Nazis?
While Gitmo, rendition, and Abu Dhabi reflect poorly on us Americans, we are not yet Nazis. We have temporarily lost our mind as a nation. As the years create greater distance from 9/11, we will lose the urge to beat up Arabs.
Phillip
New York
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Phillip,
It is your right to disagree with anything posted on JoeBageant.com, including the comments of the daughter of one of the founders of the Nazi Party. She was by no means a Nazi, and fled to the U.S. out of revulsion for that party, and to my mind she is a valid commentator on such things because she witnessed it, just as those last remaining Jews with tattoos lived it.
And when it comes to America's historical trajectory resembling the Nazis, I think we have reached that point. We are endorsing torture, practicing it in "dark sites" around the world. We discriminate against, and in some cases persecute, Muslims in America, especially when to comes to mobility and travel. In Iraq we purposefully kill them outright by the thousands -- men, women and children, which, no matter what you may tell yourself, tickles the Israeli hardliners plum pink (just as it pleases many fundamentalist Christians.)
Official surveillance of the citizenry is now the norm. Civil liberties are now secondary to the government objectives. The weak and less than productive among us are being more or less culled out from the rest of the citizenry, by denial of basic human needs such such as health care. The state is exalted in the media, at mass gatherings such as sports events, in the classroom, even the church. We've seen widespread suppression of dissent in university faculties, workplaces and pubic areas such shopping malls (which are the sterile new American commons). We've seen domestic social policy and funds sacrificed to the building of the largest war machine ever seen on earth. All that and much more. I don't know about you, but I see parallels with the rise of Nazism, even if the details are different. Even if we have no Hitler to point to directly, the outcome appears to be the same.
In fact, when you say, "While Gitmo, rendition, and Abu Dhabi reflect poorly on us Americans, we are not yet Nazis," it smacks of denial. "Reflects poorly?" Jezuz Christ and a boatload of saints, buddy! What does it take for Americans to start calling things by their right name? Kidnapping for purposes of torture may not meet all of the criteria for a totalistic sate, but it comes too damned close for this old boy. Where do we draw the line?
And as for "losing the urge to beat up Arabs" with time, that appears to me to be a platitude of the comfortable. It carries the assumption that:
(A) Things will somehow magically just settle down, return to some sort of good old days kind of stability, despite peak oil, global warming and other factors that will only escalate the tendency toward violent solutions and the search for new scapegoats, and:
(B) The assumption that the American people are somehow in charge of what their government does, and thus when they come to their sense they will change things.
The fact is that we are killing the hell out of Muslins right now on their own homeland and brutalizing those we cannot reach directly by arming and supporting Israeli terrorism against Palestinians, etc. And in return we can expect further revenge to be sought on their part. We are still subverting democratically elected governments all over Latin America and the rest of the world.
In short, if there is blame to be fixed (some would call it accountability) I do blame the Israeli government (not all of the Israeli people) and those American Jews who unquestioningly back it. And I blame American politicians of both parties who do the same. And I do blame that portion of America's Christian leadership exhorting what amounts to a religious war. We should quit kidding ourselves that in millions of minds both here and the Middle East, in the minds of millions of Jews, Christians and Muslims, (and probably some jug fucking religious/political cults we don't even know of), it is a religious war with a great cover excuse handily provided by their respective leaderships, both governmental and religious. In this brutal new 21st Century, I think it's safe to say none are clean and most certainly no particular religion or political creed owns the entire truth.
In art and labor,
Joe
