Reply #18: So you are telling Me... [View All]

http://www.nrc.nl/images/bush,7.jpg So you are telling me... "Bombtrack This thread should be locked"
in a rather simplistic Dubya sound-byte-like fashion that anyone who feels similar to Dirk is hard-core anti military or an anti-American Loon? Gee, you sound more like Chimpface with his 'with us or against us' philosophy. I suppose the German media (therefore de facto, most of the European media) are all frothing anti-military, anti-American loonies as well.

Have you been pigging out of too many Freedom fries? Or did you recently partake in some Patriot-Act-fueled French wine bottle smashing block party?

Look Bombtrack (nice moniker), here's my two bits and this is coming from someone who has grown up on both sides of the pond, as a Canadian and a Netherlander.

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*NOTE - Canada vis-vis Jean Chretien, a man of principal, does not support the war in Iraq and is fighting in Afghanistan (you know... that place where that guy who allegedly masterminded the trashing of the world trade center is probably hiding).


*NOTE - Meanwhile, Holland is supporting the invasion of Iraq, with its lapdog right wing Christian party led by a Harry Potter look-a-like.


------------ OK, so it's not all black and white in terms of Europe and North America is it? Let's get to the point here.

1. It seems you have no idea how slanted the American media is and what you see as opposed to the multitude of opinions that are available in Europe (including the American hawk media in the form of CNN) from the BBC (yes it is available over most of Europe via cable), to national and regional views of the situation in Iraq. Broadcasters in Europe are not afraid to use footage and material from Arab media (Like Al Jazeera, who offices the Americans have 'accidently' bombed in both Afghanistan and Iraq) as well as their own correspondents that don't necessarily follow the US-UK agenda. Americans, with 400 channels on the tube these days cannot even watch Canada's CBC which is often critical and offers objective reportage on Iraq. "Who fucking cares what the Canadian's think anyways," right?

I would agree that soldier's from many countries have and still do commit war crimes but I cannot agree that US soldiers have a 'get out of jail card free' if they violate the Geneva Convention with war crimes and are free to circumvent the ICC. The US government can't even seem to follow the rules with its concentration camp at Gitmo, which DOES not meet the international rules of law. Well who cares about that... half the countries in the world have signed economically forced agreements with Bushco to circumvent the new International Criminal Court in the case of war crimes http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=13055. America is up to its armpits in conflict around the world for good reasons and I won't put on a tin foil hat when I say military industrial complex. The Bush family has been making money by fueling war since WW1, not just Prescott Bush group hugging the Nazis for cash in WW2.
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*NOTE - Samuel Prescott Bush (1863 October 4 Brick Church NJ - 1948 February 8 Columbus OH) was the father of Senator Prescott Bush, grandfather of George H. W. Bush and greatgrandfather George W. Bush.
In the spring of 1918, Bush became chief of the Ordnance, Small Arms and Ammunition Section of the War Industries Board of Bernard Baruch and Clarence Dillon, with national responsibility for government assistance to and relations with Remington and other weapons companies. (Senate hearings in 1934 by the Nye committee attacked the ‘Merchants of Death’—war profiteers such as Remington Arms and the British Vickers company—whose salesmen had manipulated many nations into war and then supplied weapons to all sides.) Unfortunately most of the records and correspondence of Bush's arms-related section of the government have been burned ‘to save space’ in the National Archives.

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What the fuck do you expect people around the world to think when you read links like that? What the fuck do you expect people around the world to think when they see footage of US soldiers firing indiscriminately into crowds of demonstrators, killing and maiming, with creeks of blood awash on the streets of Baghdad? You didn't see that on CNN did you? They won't even show your own men and women being killed by pissed-off Iraqis (no, they are not Al Qaeda... they are in Afghanistan remember?)who don't like being occupied. Your honorable men and women are pawns for oil, geopolitical strategy, arms sales. That's fucked up.

I am not saying all American soldiers are trigger happy, but when the huge majority of military personnel in Iraq is American, has a government that basically says, "Don't worry, you will never be prosecuted for war crimes in the international arena", and the main stoolie in Paul Bremer doesn't even feel the number of Iraqis being killed even merits a simple body count - one can ascertain that indiscriminate killings of Iraqis by young, scared kids who have probably seen too many reruns of Blackhawk Down are products of a violent culture in the form of mainstream media in the united states.

Many soldiers seem to just want to get the fuck out of there, according to interviews we see in Europe with US soldiers.

No one is defendable with such a lame statement that 'soldiers are good people' and 'everyone else does it too'?

This is not My Lai perhaps, this is your lie.

I am seeing developments leading to more like Mogadishu than Saigon at this point. Well unlike Somalia, looks like those fine young US men and women fighting for a lie won't have the UN to give them a hand this time.

It's schoolyard tactics. When you punch someone in the face (like the US did to France and Germany - but not Russia and China who held parallel views) they tend not to help you in the event when you get punched in the face. I think, In fact, deep down in the European collective psyche there is a feeling of them being the smaller but older and wiser brother syndrome - one that looks at its younger, bigger, dumber, thug-like, bullyish, arrogant teenage brother like they are blindfolded and playing pinata with a big stick swinging at the world.