Chalmers Johnson
This interview with Chalmers Johnson, from today’s Counterpunch, is a gold mine on gender and militarism, and on how militarism affects us all.
It also highlights the DeAnander Fractal that joins war, agribusiness, and pornography: the fantasy of control, the flight from reciprocity, and the refusal to acknowledge or respect limits.
There’s also a passage on the culture of secrecy we posted on here in the JSOC article some time back. Johnson, McGovern, and other ex-agency insiders are invaluable windows of revelation on the way the levers of power are actually manipulated.
The reaction to the rape of 1995 from, for example, General Richard Meyers, who became chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff—he was then head of U.S. forces in Japan—and all he said was that these were just three bad apples, a tragic incident, unbelievably exceptional. After research, you discover that the rate of sexually violent crimes committed by our troops in Okinawa leading to court-martial is two per month! This was not an exceptional incident, expect for the fact that the child was so young and, differing from many Okinawan women who would not come forward after being raped, she was not fully socialized and she wanted to get even. This led to the creation of a quite powerful organization that I greatly admire called Okinawan Women Act Against Military Violence.
DeAnander:
yep, CJ is still very sharp and accurate — this is a good interview.
I’m thinking about the “overstretch” and “tendency towards bankruptcy” and about the slide of substance abusers from overweening confidence, to more and more hazardous behaviours, to the Big Crash. More musings on compulsive behaviours later…
6 May 2010, 12:23 pmsanjarias:
That public men publish falsehoods
Is nothing new. That America must accept
Like the historical republics corruption and empire
Has been known for years.
Be angry at the sun for setting
If these things anger you. Watch the wheel slope and turn,
They are all bound on the wheel, these people, those warriors.
This republic, Europe, Asia.
Observe them gesticulating,
Observe them going down. The gang serves lies, the passionate
Man plays his part; the cold passion for truth
Hunts in no pack.
You are not Catullus, you know,
To lampoon these crude sketches of Caesar. You are far
From Dante’s feet, but even farther from his dirty
Political hatreds.
Let boys want pleasure, and men
9 May 2010, 9:04 pmStruggle for power, and women perhaps for fame,
And the servile to serve a Leader and the dupes to be duped.
Yours is not theirs.
Bret:
Sadly, I don’t think you need to worry, De–it’s a fait accompli. I really think the gov’t has been hijacked and has become soviet-like, only with a better propaganda apparatus. Instead of worrying, we can either get out of Dodge or decide whether determined citizens can take it back. Well, not exactly soviet-like–perhaps more along the lines of a hybrid soviet-fascism, since it is really the corporations with their billionaires in the background that have the country by the throat and will take it to banana-republic status as quickly as they can–same basic tendency in Europe. Throw the lower half under the bus, eliminate all but the necessary middle class, reduce the place to Honduras, Guatemala or the Philippines. Starve the “useless eaters.”
18 June 2010, 10:02 pmHenry:
Wikileaks Soldier Reveals Orders for “360 Rotational Fire” Against Civilians in Iraq
By Ralph Lopez
June 17, 2010 “OpEd” — Ethan McCord, one of the soldiers seen in the now-famous Wikileaks video in which two American Apache helicopters fire upon a relaxed, unhurried gaggle of men in Baghdad, has stated in an interview with World Socialist Website that he witnessed numerous times the indiscriminate slaughter of civilians in Iraq after IED attacks. McCord is on of the soldiers seen helping two wounded children after the attack. He has stepped forward with open opposition to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and written a letter of apology for his part in the incident to the mother of the children, who has accepted his apology. The mother’s husband was killed in the attack and found with his body shielding that of one of his children.
McCord said to reporter Bill Van Auken:
“we had a pretty gung-ho commander, who decided that because we were getting hit by IEDs a lot, there would be a new battalion SOP [standard operating procedure].He goes, “If someone in your line gets hit with an IED, 360 rotational fire. You kill every motherf*cker on the street.” Myself and Josh and a lot of other soldiers were just sitting there looking at each other like, “Are you kidding me? You want us to kill women and children on the street?” And you couldn’t just disobey orders to shoot, because they could just make your life hell in Iraq. So like with myself, I would shoot up into the roof of a building instead of down on the ground toward civilians. But I’ve seen it many times, where people are just walking down the street and an IED goes off and the troops open fire and kill them.”
The deliberate killing of civilians is a war crime (Nanking 1937, Hankow 1938, German Invasion of Poland 1939.) McCord is one of a growing number of soldiers and support groups who have renounced their actions in Iraq. He said:
“I was the gung-ho soldier…
I was hit by an IED within two weeks of my being in Iraq. And I didn’t understand why people were throwing rocks at us, why I was being shot at and why we’re being blown up, when I have it in my head that I was here to help these people.”
McCord says the scenes captured in the Wikileaks video are “an every-day occurrence in Iraq.”…
McCord says about his mental state afterwards:
“I went to see a staff sergeant who was in my chain of command and told him I needed to see mental health about what was going on in my head. He told me to “quit being a pussy” and to “suck it up and be a soldier.” He told me that if I wanted to go to mental health, there would be repercussions, one of them being labeled a “malingerer,” which is actually a crime in the US Army.”
McCord says the greater story is being overlooked, and that rather than blame individual soldiers, the Army itself should be examined, and its system of training soldiers.
“Instead of people being upset at a few soldiers in a video who were doing what they were trained to do, I think people need to be more upset at the system that trained these soldiers. They are doing exactly what the Army wants them to do.”
McCord echoes Major General Smedley D. Butler, the double Medal of Honor winner who resigned his commission and in 1935 became a critic of the nations wars, traveling the country with his book and famous speech “War is a Racket.” McCord said in the interview:
“I am not part of any party. Was I hopeful? Yes. Was I surprised that we are still there? No. I’m not surprised at all. There’s something else lying underneath there. It’s not Republican or Democrat; it’s money. There’s something else lying underneath it where Republicans and Democrats together want to keep us in Iraq and Afghanistan.”
McCord talks about the ongoing effects of war:
“I still live with this every day. When I close my eyes I see what happened that day and many other days like a slide show in my head. The smells come back to me. The cries of the children come back to me. The people driving this big war machine, they don’t have to deal with this. They live in their $36 million mansions and sleep well at night.”
18 June 2010, 10:09 pmTimothy R. Anderson:
On the way to complete maintaining of an empire a few stumbling-blocks keep sproutin’ up …..
http://news.opb.org/article/8473-kbr-says-not-responsible-soldiers-health-problems/
The major influencers in the mainstream American media don’t mention it much but the USA ‘s military is indeed heavily dependent on contractors ; contractors, who, in a whole lot of cases actually,
should not be trusted. Persons such as Chalmers Johnson, Ralph Nader, and others have attempted to point this out.
Timothy R. Anderson
13 July 2010, 1:29 pm