Take but degree away, untune that string,
And, hark, what discord follows! each thing meets
In mere oppugnancy: the bounded waters
Should lift their bosoms higher than the shores
And make a sop of all this solid globe:
Strength should be lord of imbecility,
And the rude son should strike his father dead:
Force should be right; or rather, right and wrong,
Between whose endless jar justice resides,
Should lose their names, and so should justice too.
(Troilus and Cressida, act 1, sc. 3)
Comes a point when even thinking of expressing thoughts about the latest, or the penultimate or any previous lie or charade of the US apparatchik triggers nausea. Even within the narrow historical range of two or three administrations the lies stretch out to the crack of doom. And it is all déjà vu.
An infant can be “mewling and puking in the nurse’s arm” but we don’t have that opportunity. In the instance, I cannot even watch Obama, or Kerry or any other of the hound dogs feeding at the government’s trough. Reading the quoted statements on line is pain enough.
Therefore, I will not repeat what just about everyone knows about the latest lies to justify yet another bombing – now Syria.
Today it’s the 40th anniversary of the US sponsored coup to overthrow the democratically elected Chilean government. And to kill Salvador Allende along with thousands of Chilean (mostly young) people opposing the subhuman Pinochet. Even a cursory reading of the media of the times shows that the US government line (supported by the media), was that the people of Chile had “spontaneously” risen against the “socialist” Allende. Which is new-speak for “American corporations in Chile were concerned about their ass.”
A little revenge in name of the truth surfaced recently when a document previously classified was released thanks to the FOIA “Freedom of Information Act”. Incidentally, the Vatican should beatify whoever was behind the FOIA – in an age where lying is a civic duty, truth is a miracle.
In 1970, the CIA’s deputy director wrote in a secret memo, “It is firm and continuing policy that Allende be overthrown by a coup. … It is imperative that these actions be implemented clandestinely and securely so that the USG [read the U.S. government] and American hand be well hidden,” unquote. That same year, President Nixon ordered the CIA to, quote, “make the economy scream” in Chile to “prevent Allende from coming to power or [to] unseat him.” And of course from that point on, the coup became a joint operation.
I read that the current secretary of state has said that the president of Syria crossed a “red line” by allegedly using chemical weapons against his own people. And that the planned bombing of Syria reflects the politician’s fatherly feeling for children killed during the (Syrian) war.
This politician’s stated sensitivity to dead children is beyond “Shame, where is thy blush?” One of the indelible images in the history of the Vietnam war is a little girl, naked and burning, running down a Vietnamese road after a chemical weapons attack by the United States. And the US all but condemned Al-Jazeera as a terrorist organization for airing images of Iraqi children incinerated in the American attack in 2003.
And to roll time back a few more years, in WWII the U.S. holds primacy not only for the firebombing of Dresden and Tokyo, but for being the first and only military power in history to burn alive hundreds of thousands of civilians with atomic weapons in the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
I am waiting for an academic pundit to explain in academese language that “atomic” weapons are not the same as “chemical” weapons.
But returning to Vietnam, I found this sobering letter written by a Vietnam Veteran, whose name I will not publish,
“Nine years after I came back from Vietnam as an Army medic, I found myself in a padded cell of a psychiatric hospital, raging in total disbelief that I was the enemy in Vietnam. Lying is the most powerful weapon in war, and people like John Kerry, and Barak Obama are the very reasons I wanted to execute myself. America has become a monster, and people like Kerry, Obama, and Wall Street are the very reasons that we as a country have sunk to the very bottom of immorality.”
The Veteran may not have taken into account that morality is qualitative, not quantitative. It is not factual, it does not lend itself to Gallup polls or to other measurements invented by the Aristotles of market research. And what is not factual, including morality, is irrelevant.
Let these God-fearing, God-invoking and God-trusting politicians be reminded of the biblical lines, “For we wrestle not against flesh and blood but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.” (Ephesians 6:12). And that sometimes strength (military or otherwise), is indeed the lord of imbecility, as per the Shakespearean quote that titles this article.
In the play. Ulysses upbraids the Greeks for their weakness and lack of mental discipline (degree)
Image source: http://do-more-withyourlife.deviantart.com/art/Lord-of-Darkness-bust-by-Daran-Holt-351939686