I shouted out, 'Who Raped the Iraqis?', when after all, it was you & me

let's remember that our tax dollars go to the rape of Iraq and Afghanistan. that's what's truly going on, and it's an old story, old as mankind. We aren't liberating, re-building, democratizing, or helping the oppressed, we are raping the oppressed. and then killing them.

we, the people, who pay taxes for everything we consume, we the people who live in luxury while the slaves make our sneakers, we who are shocked at the notorious photos, we share the blame in this rape.

we threw charles manson in prison for life, for grisly murders that he himself did not commit. he apparently ordered subordinates to do the actual murders, but he's doin' the time. now we have sergeants, colonels, generals, and secretaries of defense, and presidents themselves sanctioning the subjugation and total domination of 'the enemy'. and the enemy is the entire Islamic world.

you can tell yourself, 'i had nothing to do with those atrocities', 'it was just a few awful soldiers out of control', or, 'i'm a democrat, so you can't blame me for any of this', but the fact remains, our taxes are used to kill men, women, and children who have no quarrel with us, and have never trespassed against us.

the fact that even the tiniest percentage of our money goes for this imperialism, and for nazi behavior, and the fact that we sit here and allow it, as if it weren't even happening, makes us all complicit in the rape. we live under the illusion that there's nothing we can do about it, but our money supports it.

the real horror of what our money is being used for in Iraq is kept from our sensitive eyes. we are so wrapped in the glare of distraction and luxury that we have made invisible, the human suffering we are enabling.

and now, i'd like to end my sermon with a line from 'the lord's prayer'

'give us this day, our daily bread, and forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us.

it lies.

i understand your gist here, mopaul. but from what I've seen on this board, you do just about all one can do to fight the white house regime, short of taking some sort of insane, illegal action.

At some point we have to let go of a need to self-flagellate and allow blame and responsibility to fall where they will naturally...right on the heads of george w bush and his cronies and enablers.

yes, they use and abuse my tax dollars, but only because they ruthlessly seized power in the 2000 selection.

I've got plenty of mistakes and guilt on my conscience; I make a point of not seeking it out when it doesn't belong to me.

:-)

I cannot withhold my taxes, I opposed this war in any way I could.
I am not BFEE and do plenty to prove it.
This country is not BFEE, much as they try - it's also us. It's mostly us in fact - and this is the reason I love it.

of course your right. whatever percentage it is out of one american dollar that goes to make life hell on innocents, that's the numeric percentage of guilt you bare, if putting it into numbers helps.

maybe it's only 3 cents out of the buck you payed for a coke. but how many folks drink coke? that's a lot of money. add up all the taxes from our yearly purchases and before you know it, your talking about real money, and real guilt

no matter what ralph nader says :eyes:

We who are still alive and out of prison haven't done all we can do. People immolated themselves during Vietnam. I'm not suggesting that any particular person immolate himself, only that we acknowledge that simply 'opposing the war' isn't quite the profile in courage a lot of folks around here would like to think.

Acknowledging one's responsibility is not self-flagellation. It's just the adult thing to do.

we should all feel guilty until we have taken actions that result in death or imprisonment? Seems to me I'd do better to try to stay alive and out of prison, at least until I'm finished raising my son. I'd feel guilty if didn't finish that job first.

Just that we acknowledge that our hands are not truly clean.

I'm not in jail, and I'm not so hypocritical that I'd demand of others what I will not do myself. And I am not guilty about that fact--just responsible.

Our culture has gotten very good at denial of responsibility, to the point where it's considered a psychological virtue; as if even acknowledging our imperfection is a form of self-hatred.

Of course you should stay out of jail and raise your child. But we who make these compromises should admit that we could do more, and chose not to. That's all.

I see a lot of 'he's not MY president' around here, but I don't remember any ten million person seige of the Supreme Court in 2000. We really all could have done more.

one draw the line between peaceful, general activism and outrage motivating ever more drastic measures?

just as with vietnam, the further bush pushes all of this insanity and deception, the closer he gets to the lines many of us have drawn here and there; at some point we WILL cross over.

the crowds of hundreds of protesters will become thousands and then millions.

this all said, I reserve GWB's fulll measure of blame, shame and responsibility for him to bear.

As I said in an earlier post, I have plenty of imperfections and faults and guilt, I don't need to go borrowing any from the republicans.

There's been no wave of general strikes, sit-ins, etc. There's been nothing but "ain't it awful!"

Fair enough. I'm not saying everyone needs to immolate himself at the pentagon, only that we acknowledge the simple fact that we are not going to that extreme, so we shouldn't get too self-congratulatory about simply not supporting Bush.

99% of the Earth's population doesn't support Bush--it's not really an accomplishment, looked at that way. Yes, we are better than the Republicans. And Bush is better than Osama Bin Laden. (He really is.) I'm arguing for slightly more rigorous standards, is all.

nor do I demand of others what I will not do myself. Yes, I could have done more and chose not to. But I don't feel responsible. I feel disturbed, outraged, even ashamed. But not responsible.

The world was a bad place long before I arrived in 1960. If I'd realized how totally FUBAR it would be in 2004, I'd have been a good girl - not slacked off in school, not done drugs, not slept with a bunch of losers and ended up feeling lucky to have built a decent career and gotten a great kid out of one of my bad relationship choices and to have survived the last one. I'd have become an astronaut like I wanted when I was 6 and be thinking about running for political office about now, having never done anything that would enable others to question my fitness for government. And I'd be the best congresswoman, senator, and president this country has ever seen.

But here I am instead, making the best of the life I created. And I don't feel even a tiny twinge of responsibility for the pack of liars and criminals other people have voted for, or anything those liars and criminals have done. I might not have recognized or even thought much about them, had it not been for my last bad relationship choice. I might have continued to believe what I'm told and assume others have good intentions that are similar to mine and are playing by the same set of rules that I am. I might have continued to assume that all bad people eventually wind up in jail.

But now I know that's not true. Unfortunately, it took a really bad experience for me to know it and see just how many bad people there are. And they will still be there long after I'm dead, taking advantage of a vast, corrupt system that's designed to keep most of the world poor, ignorant, and oppressed. I did not help to create that system. I may have fed it, but only because I had to. So why should I feel responsible? I'm sorry, I just don't.

Think of the Civil Rights movement--some whites in the North saw it as a battle with bad people in the south. Others saw their own culpability. The ones who saw their own culpability were generally precisely the people with the least to answer for--the most progressive and un-bigoted northern (and southern) whites. The standard explanation has become "white guilt" or "liberal guilt."

I would suggest that the most enlightened northern whites were simply more morally motivated, not pathologically guilt ridden. The moral sensibilities that allowed them to be more progressive in the first place were the same sensibilities that allowed them to see their own culpability. Being moral has costs and benefits. Taking more responsibility than one's neighbors, even when that seems unfair, is one of the costs. I feel more responsibility for the Iraq war than most Republicans do, but only because I think of things in terms of personal moral responsibility, not because I'm really more culpable.

If abstract recognition of responsibility would make you feel bad or make your life worse, then don't do it. I don't promote this view to bum anyone out.

I just don't feel responsible for others' bad acts. I don't equate moral motivation with a sense of culpability, either. I can be motivated to end the war and the Bush regime - even feel responsible for ending it - without feeling like I caused or contributed to it.

You seem to be judging the quality of people's morals. So tell me, what is this sense of culpability getting done in the world? We're both wasting time yakking away on the internet. Are your posts somehow more effective than mine because you have accepted responsibility for rape and torture you did not personally commit or voluntarily support?

i didn't walk on the moon. I didn't pave any highways and i didn't abuse any iraqis. this longing to try and move the responsibility away from the sick fucks who did it and the idiots that allowed it to anyone else is ridiculous.

maybe some people feel the need to climb up onto a cross but not me. it's a useless waste of energy.

n/t

"we threw charles manson in prison for life, for grisly murders that he himself did not commit. he apparently ordered subordinates to do the actual murders,"

Isnt it funny how much our government and Charlie Manson Have in common.
"I am a Gangster.. Woman"..CManson

I always found it interesting the the Victors are allways the Heroes
Yet The Conquered are always war Criminals and commit war Crimes.

a map of IWaq and the words-Bush's rape room- over it.

Get the *MIC rapist OUT OF THE ROOM, IMMEDIATELY. Raise such a hue and cry of outrage that your loved ones are shipped HOME. Please, DO IT NOW.

in Loss of Face, Blood, Failure, and Big Bucks. Once more Bush stick to his game plan, LOSE.

and if we listen to Murphy and Murphy, "If you gonna lose, LOSE BIG"

Americans were not "fooled". They willingly went along with the lies, because they were scared to death on Sept 11th.

Fear will chase out the truth every time.

And don't blame all of America either. Most people do not condone what has truly happened. It is the silent minority of thugs and thieves who have once again besmirched America.

Not in my name. No way. Not ever. So stop saying that.

We who are still alive and out of prison haven't done all we can do. We who can pay our bills haven't done all we could do.

If you think your opinions insulate you from your responsibilities then you're veering into Bush territory, where US abuses are okay because Saddam's abuses were so much worse. Or, even more on point, that the only people responsible for 9/11 are the terrorists.

Of course Bush is more to blame than you are. So what? There's plenty of blame to go around.

when I voted against Bush and have been saying he's a criminal piece of shit since about September 12, 2001. I have opposed both his wars and basically every other bogus thing he's done every day. I oppose his very existence.

Oh, sure, I resent the hell out of having to pay for George W. Bush and his decisions. I resent having to pay for a bunch of people to sit around talking about and around the criminal acts of Bush and his friends until the cows come home, instead of just throwing them in all prison when it's so far beyond obvious that's where they belong. I resent having to keep paying while they do more damage and lie about it and put us all at risk, and others deny and defend them. I resent having to pay for an army - the composition of which I'll resist the urge to comment on - to do their bidding and take their falls.

But it's not like I have a choice. I'd be in prison for refusing to pay taxes long before George W. Bush lost a dollar or a single privilege because of his actions.

And here's the sad part: I don't believe this prisoner abuse and torture is some new thing that suddenly started happening when George W. Bush took office. I don't believe it has anything to do with him, except that he put the torturers and abusers in Iraq and let them have at it while he congratulated himself and his friends and raked in the money. So if this is the thing that finally takes him down, all right. I'll take it any way I can get it. And hope I live to see the day when America has a real president with some semblance of a conscience who doesn't care more about increasing his personal power and fortune than making the world a better place for as many people as possible.

it was awesome!

Want a beer?


</sarcasm>

I'm saddened by the continual view on these boards that simply not voting for Bush frees one of any responsibility for the world they live in. I don't claim to have made a difference, but at least I don't think my opinions are accomplishments.

I paid my taxes this year. Obviously I shouldn't have, but I did. And I will probably pay them next year also. And when I die I'll go to hell for it, if there is a hell. I'm a 'good person' and I expect my cubicle in hell to be less cruel than whatever awaits Bush, but I doubt that simply holding certain opinions gets a person into heaven. (I'm a stone atheist, but it's a serviceable cultural metaphor)

As Thoreau said to Whitman, "what are you doing out there?" (Anyone who wants to flesh out that reference for other readers, please do so.)

If your conscience really bothers you, then you shouldn't pay them--and take the consequences. Immediate imprisonment isn't going to happen, anyway. You might get away with it for years, even decades, if you do it right.

But Jesus told the Jews to pay their taxes--to a ruler who wasn't just engaging in war, but who was actively killing them.

Sometimes what is truly right or wrong is far beyond what we might think those concepts to be.

The passage "Render unto Caesar what is Caesar's..."--if one is to plumb the traditional meaning from it--simply does not gel with Christ's storming of the temple, nor is it consistent with the ideas arising from his Sermon on the Mount (a three chapter piece of text that is as revolutionary as anything written by Marx).

And I don't want to turn this into a Christian doctrinal argument. But consider this, regarding the "storming of the Temple":

King Herod the Great, who died in 4 BCE, had the governmental palace built on a hill overlooking the Temple portico. This enabled him to observe the rituals of the priests in the Outer Court. When the Romans stationed their troops in Jerusalem, they lined the portico walls with guards. This practice was still extant in 36 CE--the year the Pharisees demanded and obtained the recall of Pilate to Rome (for abuses of power). Do you really believe that these guards, serving in an atmosphere of public discontent that had already ignited once (Judas of Galilee, 6 CE), would have just stood around with their hands in their pockets as Jesus ravaged the Temple below them?

IMO, it is far more likely that Jesus made the statement about taxes than that he overturned money tables in the clear view of both the Roman guard and the king's palace.

What did Mopaul mean by the Thoreau/Whitman analogy? I know that the author of "Civil Disobedience" spent time in prison, but can someone explain this further?

of the government. he was jailed, and was prepared to remain in jail as a statement of "Civil Disobedience." he was later released from jail when a friend paid his taxes and fines against his wishes.

Henry David Thoreau: great writer, American Hero

I shouldn't have thrown that out there without the story. But I don't recall the specific language. I'll try...

Thoreau refused to pay a war tax. He was thrown in jail. His friend Whitman came to see him and said through the bars, "Henry, what are you doing in there?" Thoreau replied by asking Whitman what Whitman was doing outside the jail.

Eighteen thousand people a year die needlessly because they don't have access to health care. We have homeless in every corner of our country, many of them are our veterans of earlier wars. Children go hungry because their parents don't make enough at their minimum wage jobs to feed them properly and school lunch programs are being cut back after Bush's tax cuts for the rich.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=104x1557468

By Philip Kennicott
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, May 5, 2004; Page C01

Among the corrosive lies a nation at war tells itself is that the glory -- the lofty goals announced beforehand, the victories, the liberation of the oppressed -- belongs to the country as a whole; but the failure -- the accidents, the uncounted civilian dead, the crimes and atrocities -- is always exceptional. Noble goals flow naturally from a noble people; the occasional act of barbarity is always the work of individuals, unaccountable, confusing and indigestible to the national conscience.

This kind of thinking was widely in evidence among military and political leaders after the emergence of pictures documenting American abuse of Iraqi prisoners in Abu Ghraib prison. These photographs do not capture the soul of America, they argued. They are aberrant.
This belief, that the photographs are distortions, despite their authenticity, is indistinguishable from propaganda. Tyrants censor; democracies self-censor. Tyrants concoct propaganda in ministries of information; democracies produce it through habits of thought so ingrained that a basic lie of war -- only the good is our doing -- becomes self-propagating.
-snip-
Look at these images closely and you realize that they can't just be the random accidents of war, or the strange, inexplicable perversity of a few bad seeds. First of all, they exist. Soldiers who allow themselves to be photographed humiliating prisoners clearly don't believe this behavior is unpalatable. Second, the soldiers didn't just reach into a grab bag of things they thought would humiliate young Iraqi men. They chose sexual humiliation, which may recall to outsiders the rape scandal at the Air Force Academy, Tailhook and past killings of gay sailors and soldiers.
-snip-
Not quite 50 years ago, Aime Cesaire, a poet and writer from Martinique, wrote in his "Discourse on Colonialism": "First we must study how colonization works to decivilize the colonizer, to brutalize him in the true sense of the word, to degrade him, to awaken him to buried instincts, to covetousness, violence, race hatred, and moral relativism."
Are we decivilized yet? Are we brutes yet? Of course not, say our leaders.
 
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A2040-2004May4.html

"It is we that live in abundance and send our young men to die. It is our chemicals that scorch the children and our bombs that level the villages. We are all participants."



I feel tremendous moral guilt for being American--I feel as if I were living on the Death Star. That I joined protests is a tepid defense; my voice of defiance was not loud enough. I finally concur with what the various Christian creeds state: I am "wretched"; I am "a poor, sinful being."

The most painful thing for me is that I don't know how to counter decades of abominable foreign policy; but I do accept any charge of culpability levied upon me.

I didn't.

I'll follow suit! :D

Of course, we'd end in jail where one of us have to get used to being a homosexual. :evilgrin:

I wrote, I marched, I called congress, the WH, everything I could to stop this Goddam war, and now that they really screwed it up with their denials of human rights and decency I am to blame? Sorry, I won't hang MY head in shame, I knew what this war would do, and I and many others tried to stop it.

i was 12, and on all the t.v. networks in the days that followed, i kept hearing the weird mantra, 'this is our fault' 'we killed kennedy', and other self flagellating comments. years later, the rolling stones used the line in 'sympathy for the devil'

i shouted out, who killed the kennedy's, when afterall, it was you and me.

no need to say sorry for being an american, we all voted against bush. no need to hang your head in shame, we all knew when we first heard bush two was coming, the real carnage would soon follow.

no one is hanging a stone on your neck. it's just, literally or not, our nation ultimately bears the guilt of genocide.

i know you had nothing to do with it annagull. and i agree, they can't lay that guilt on us, who opposed the whole nightmare

I think this blogger really hits the nail on the head:
(btw, great "mission accomplished" gif!)

Say whatever you want, but for God's sake, stop saying you're "ashamed." I understand shame to be a community-building emotion that ties people together in mutual identification, but the time for that is now officially over.

You didn't torture anybody in Iraq. You didn't pose for pictures. You didn't defend it or slyly rationalize it away. You didn't cheer for it. You didn't vote for it (and you had your vote stolen.) And yet every day for three years you've been called traitors and scum on morning radio and CNN because the totalitarian impulse of the redneck hive mind cannot tolerate even the smallest degree of disagreement or emotional friction. And the fact is that when the right comes for you, at your house, the leering soldiers in those photos are the soldiers that will be knocking on the door. They're America. MacLeod is right: you can feel the decadence now, the cultural deathwish.

They don't acknowledge your right to participate in politics or national identification; they don't acknowledge any citizen consubstantiality with you. They don't acknowledge any rules of civility or fair play, and their less than secret attitude toward you is as eliminationist as it is toward "terrorists"-- a category which you now explicitly occupy. They have the cultural majority (stop whistling in the dark), they have three branches of government, and a propaganda machine that has nearly 60% of the population believing that we found WMD in Iraq. So approximately that percentage will buy whatever rightwing fraternity-hazin' spin on these or other photos of torture, rape, decapitation. Or anything else that crops up. "So what? It's war."

They're not nationalists, they're tribalists. And you don't belong to the tribe any more than the detainees. They've made that quite clear...

It's not your country anymore, and those who own it are vile. ...Enough with being "ashamed." No. Don't bear their fucking guilt for them.
http://www.ufobreakfast.com/archive/00000317.htm