Results tagged “war” from Subversive Soapbox

Hi, my name is Bob, and I’m a gratefully-recovering CNN-addict.

Hi, Bob.

I really wanted to name this post: wtf is wrong with the US media, part III, but I thought it was getting stale.  I just really can’t think of anything else to say.

First of all, two of the top stories on cnn.com are about sick/dead celebrities’ children.  Yes, it’s sad that your son has just been diagnosed with some rare disease/has died .  Thousands of people die every day, but we don’t hear about them. Thousands die because of American and foreign corporations that are raping the earth, but we don’t hear about them.  Thousands of Iraqi civilians have died in the war, but we don’t hear about them.  I still do not understand why celebrities are considered news.  Perhaps the only time a celebrity should be in the news would be a headline reading: “Madonna Receives Nobel Prize for Physics Due to Discovery of Quantuum Worm Holes in Deep Space”.  You know, something significant.   

Second of all, I was reading this article that was waxing poetic about the possibilities of politics in 2009.  Part of it discussed the deflation of the Republican party, which is of importance since it is now the opposition party.  And then, then the article states: If the Republican Party is not effective, does the national media become the opposition voice?

The nation media has COMPLETELY CEASED to have the ability to become the opposition voice!  When the current administration was banging the war drums, the media rolled over and served as a megaphone for the Beltway.  During the entire primary and election season, the media parroted and sound-clipped the trail, but didn’t do any significant vetting or provide citizens with coverage of any third party candidates.  The media has ceased to be the ‘fourth estate’, and no longer can be used as a tool to keep other branches of government in check.  “Does the national media become the opposition voice?” Dream on, CNN.  If you think you are capable of becoming a true voice of opposition, I’m capable of growing a second head.  Seriously.  How can they even delude themselves?  The nation media is stuck in the entertainment business, when they should be in the journalism business.

And, me, like Bob, can’t stop going to these sites and watching/listening these shows. Does it make me a more educated soapboxer, or is it the worst thing I could possibly be doing?  

I was watching this interview of Utah Phillips, late folk singer/activist.  He was interviewed by Amy Goodman of Democracy Now! If you get a chance, do check out that interview; Utah Phillips is fun to listen to.  Here’s what he said in response to a question about the media.

UTAH PHILLIPS: “Let’s see, you started out with what media has done to people. You know that better than I do. That’s why you do what you do. See, you’re doing an alternative media. And if we play our cards right and have enough time, then pretty soon it won’t be alternative media anymore. But then, we have a thorough understanding—don’t we, Amy—that they fight with money and we fight with time, and they’re going to run out of money before we run out of time. So we’ll just be patient, and you do your work, and I’ll do mine, and we’ll catch up and overtake them.

It’s a damn shame, though, that we have to be alternative. But then, we’re in a capitalist environment, we’re in a capitalist system that’s built on—that’s built on the least commendable features of the human psyche, greed and envy, rather than the best. We in community radio, in pirate radio, in alternative music distribution, we reach for the best in people, you know, we don’t—not lowest common denominators. And we are building a new world within the shell of the old.

I don’t feel pessimistic about that at all. There’s simply too many good people right here in this room, too many good people on the street, close to the street, doing too many good things for me to afford the luxury of being pessimistic. I’m going to—I’ll tell people that tonight, damn it. I’m glad it came up. If I look at the world from the top down, from FOX, God help me, or CNN or—there ought to be a CNN-Anon to wean people from that idiocy. If I look at it from the top down, I get seriously depressed. The world’s going to hell in a wheelbarrow. But if I walk out the door, turn all that off, and go with the people, whatever town I’m in, who are doing the real work down at the street level, like I say, there’s too many good people doing too many good things for me to let myself be pessimistic about that. I’m hopeful, can’t live without hope. Can you?”

According to a recent CNN poll, people's fears about the possibility of a major terrorist attack are at an all time low. 

The irrational fear of death at the hands of a terrorist can be classified as an availability heuristic (more or less created by our government and media).  An availability heuristic is defined as "a phenomenon (which can result in a cognitive bias) in which people base their prediction of the frequency of an event or the proportion within a population based on how easily an example can be brought to mind" (definition courtesy of Wikipedia).

In this case, a terrorist incident can easily be brought to mind.  How many times have you seen the planes hit the World Trade Center or people running through the streets of Manhattan on that pleasant fall morning?  I bet you can see it right now.

The classic example of an availability heuristic is that, despite tragic fears, you are far more likely to die in your automobile than on a plane.  You are far more likely to die in your automobile than in a terrorist attack.  According to this article, you are more likely to meet your demise by a car crash, crossing the street, drowning, a fire, a fall, or homicide than you are to die in a terrorist attack. The mortality rate of Americans dying from a terrorist attack on domestic soil since after  9/11 has been 0.  So in the past 7 years, you have had no chance to die in a terrorist attack.  And yet, according to the CNN poll, 35% of people polled believe that a terrorist attack will occur in the next couple of weeks.  

What?  What is wrong with these people?  They're more likely to die from a heart attack or a self-inflicted gunshot wound or the flu than a terrorist attack. 

I can opinion that there is no radical Islamic terrorist threat whatsoever in this country.  I'm not going to say that some other yahoo group isn't going to come along and do something stupid (or that we're not going to have more idiotic people with guns on school campuses), but you're not going to have jihadists killing a single citizen on U.S. soil. 

Some might say that this is because our "war on terror" is working, but I say that it's because the tragedy of September 11 was created or aided by the complicity of U.S. officials to generate a fear in Americans unseen since the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. 9/11 served as the catalyst needed for involvement in a war that Americans didn't want to engage in (again, a WWII parallel), and now that they got what they wanted, there's no need to scare us again. 

There is no terrorist threat. 

I sat there, really thinking about why we are wanting to fight yet another losing war.  The US hasn't really emerged "victorious" in a war in, oh, say, 60 years. 

So I think about oil and money and blah blah blah blah.  But I just don't understand. Why would anyone want that much money? On an individual level, what are you going to do as CEO of, say, Halliburton? Smoke Cuban cigars with the Bushes and drink really expensive brandy in the boardroom?

Sure.  Money = power. At what point does it become just not necessary?  When you already have a gabazillion dollars, why do you possibly need anymore?  Pull a Scrooge McDuck and swim in gold coins? Buy another Hummer?

My point is, at some juncture, when does money stop being a motivating factor to be corrupt?  Let's take the example of a bird bath. Let's say it fulfills it's purpose: it fills up with water.  Completely.  You are happy that the birds have that bird bath.  Why would you possibly need it to rain more?  It's full of water, is serving it's purpose, that's that.  The bird bath may become cleaner with each pouring of rain, but that's just a bonus. Men become dirtier with each exchange of money, but that's just a fact.

Does corruption and greed and all of that garbage become internalized somewhere? Or is that an institutionalized value that is not personally held?  Somewhere, the collective is corrupt and greedy, but in the end perhaps each individual just wants his/her own.  Don't cultures (even corrupt ones) build upon shared individual values and goals? What's going on here?

We're supposed to be democraticized and advanced and civil and we just go over into someone else's country and start shooting things.

How can I be proud to be an American?

I saved the first of the Party slogans of 1984 for last.  Not because it is particularly powerful, but because it is the most profusely contradictory.  Further, it is probably the closest to our own reality, as governments and politicians try to tell us that

WAR IS PEACE.

I am unabashedly anti-war.  In this day and age, there is no need to declare war on another nation.  Rather, there has been no reason for us declare war on a nation since perhaps the bombing of Pearl Harbor during World War II (and perhaps not even then).  In my lifetime, I remember Operation Desert Storm, the bombs dropped in Kosovo, the war in Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, and Iraq.  The two most recent wars were waged in the name of America's freedom from terrorists.  We are told that these military operations will make the world a more peaceful place.

Tactically, I don't think we can solve the problem of terrorism (if it even truly exists at the scale we are told) with traditional warfare.  America's defenses are entrenched in a Cold War mentality, and trying to place age-old warfare strategies on something that's quite new.  Stopping terrorism won't be accomplished by dropping bombs on civilians that aren't involved.  The exaggerated terrorist threat is, in this writer's opinion, virtually non-existent to Americans.  The analogy I often use for the inappropriateness of the war launched on Afghanistan to destroy the Taliban and Al-Queda is this: if your neighbor comes into my house and shoots my mother, do I have the right to bomb your entire neighborhood in retaliation to "smoke him out" of his hole?  Doesn't seem quite logical. And seems pretty unfair to all of his neighbors. 

Being a cradle Catholic, I was very upset at George W. Bush's catering to Pope John Paul II's to gain approval of the war in Iraq.  According to the Catechism of the Catholic Church, the Just War doctrine is as follows:

"The strict conditions for legitimate defense by military force require rigorous consideration. The gravity of such a decision makes it subject to rigorous conditions of moral legitimacy. At one and the same time:

• the damage inflicted by the aggressor on the nation or community of nations must be lasting, grave, and certain;
• all other means of putting an end to it must have been shown to be impractical or ineffective;
• there must be serious prospects of success;
• the use of arms must not produce evils and disorders graver than the evil to be eliminated. The power of modern means of destruction weighs very heavily in evaluating this condition."

These seem like pretty good guidelines, if you are going to be for war.  None of these conditions were met for the wars that have been waged in the past half-century. 

Noam Chomsky points out in several of his works that the Vietnam protest efforts actually took an extremely long time to become mobilized.  They were due in large part to men and women who returned from Vietnam and wanted to speak against the injustice of the 'conflict' [not war] that was being waged in the jungles of southern Vietnam.  In contrast with today's military, many of those people were involuntary combatants, as they were drafted.  In today's all-volunteer armed forces, we are dependent upon those few courageous souls who risk their reputation and careers to speak against the various lies being told about major combat operations in Iraq and, to a lesser extent, Afghanistan.  

There are grave consequences, however, to ending this mismanaged war.  Politicians and policy makers can make fabulous promises about "bringing home our troops", while neglecting to mention that our government will undoubtedly continue to employ private contractors like Blackwater to maintain the region.  Your tax dollars fund these contractors just as well, if not moreso, than our boys and girls in green.  In fact, more money is given to these contractors, and they are unregulated entities that will never be arrested, face a court martial, or apologize for the civilian atrocities we know they are committing.

I could go on forever, but I think I'll stop here.  I'll leave you with the paraphrased words of a college friend of mine, Aidan Delgado (who gained Conscientious Objector status while stationed at Abu Ghraib).  He reminded an audience that the torture, abuse, and atrocities that are done by our compatriots (contracted or enlisted) are ultimately a reflection of all Americans.  The decision to support a war in which crimes against humanity are being incurred is your responsibility with dire consequences.  You cannot support a war in hopes of peace, most especially when the acts of that war are far more destructive than any hypothetical alternative.