(2 pm. – promoted by ek hornbeck)
Every now and then one of our “representative” leaders lets the mask slip and Americans get a peek at the monster behind the mask. The monsters that represent us are well-known elsewhere in the world by the people who are variously invaded, bombed, incinerated by flying death robots, disappeared, held in gulags, tortured, sanctioned, starved, treated to heaping helpings of depleted uranium, attacked with banned weapons like white phosphorus, brutalized by authoritarian dictators and puppets that our monsters support with weapons Made in America(tm). I could go on, but you get the picture.
One of the most memorable mask-slips of recent times was when the ghastly gasbag Madelaine Albright revealed the sociopathic policy of the Clinton administration – claiming that it was “worth it” to cause the deaths, estimated in a 1995 U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) report as 567,000 Iraqi children under the age of five, to bring Saddam Hussein to heel.
This idea that it was a good thing to starve an almost imponderable number of children to enforce American interests was apparently widely held within the Clinton administration as Clinton’s energy Secretary, Bill Richardson, doubled down on supporting it shortly afterwards.
A couple of years later the monsters were ready to up their game. At a televised town meeting held in St. John Arena at Ohio State University to drum up support for an escalation of hostilities to invade Iraq, the Clinton administration’s Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, Defense Secretary William Cohen and National Security Adviser Sandy Berger appeared.
Facing hecklers and strong opposition from a crowd chanting, “One, two, three, four, we don’t want your racist war,” Albright attempted to justify the Clinton policies by using terms all too familiar:
“What we are doing, is being the indispensable nation, willing to make the world safe for our children and grandchildren, and for nations who follow the rules.”
Yes, yes – the Clinton administration cares deeply about children.
The Clinton administration loved the children so much that they were willing to slaughter them and their parents by the millions.
Because America is the indispensable dispenser of death and destruction.
By the time that the (second) Bush administration came along, even positing a rationale for killing became something of a joke:
“No masks here!” All of the monsters are bald-faced killers.
One administration full of bald-faced, unrepentant killers, torturers and war criminals fades without accountability into another. We now have a president that’s “really good at killing people” – and also thinks that it’s a pretty funny joke:
So, now as America prepares itself for the grand pageantry of the 1% purchasing another national election, there is an inevitable candidate who has had her own “monster moment” on national teevee where her mask slipped off:
Yep, if you enjoyed the Obama administration’s laugh-a-minute killing spree, Hillary has you covered. She apparently enjoys a satisfyingly brutal assassination:
Colonel Muammar Gaddafi, wearing matching tan pants and shirt, by now soaked in blood, stopped briefly and looked around, seemingly bewildered. He had little more than a few seconds to take in his surroundings before being grabbed by each arm and wrenched away from his final, ignominious refuge. …
A mob grew around Gaddafi as he was frog-marched through the sand. While he was being taken towards a group of rebel trucks, one fighter crouched in the dirt behind the frightened captive and sodomised him with a bayonet.
“Haram alaikum!” screamed Gaddafi, his voice hoarse and his eyes darting wildly. Loosely translated: “It’s a sin what you are doing!” …
Blood from the vanquished leader’s various wounds was now caking his shirt. Blows rained down on him. Every one of his captors seemed to want a piece of the hobbled tyrant. … Gaddafi was thrown on to the front of a white car bonnet, his bloodsoaked head locked between the knees of a militiaman from nearby Misrata. He slipped off the bonnet, his ravaged body unable to cope with the constant battering. The militiaman hauled him back up. …
Adam Zawbi, a 20-year-old Misrata fighter, saw what happened next. “I had just got there,” he said. “We got a call that Gaddafi was captured and we went straight to the area. There were lots of guys shouting and Gaddafi was in the centre of the road. I saw the gun. I saw the hand holding it and I heard it fire.”
Hilarious! Or should I say Hillary-ous?
“We came. We saw. He died. Hahahahaha! chuckle, snort,” said the compassion-filled candidate who is running for president to be a champion for “everyday Americans.”
Yes, the woman who laughs at gory deaths with her media buddies under the glare of the studio lights wants to lead us in making America a kinder place. On another teevee date with her media pals, Hillary said without apparent irony:
“The most important thing is how we treat each other and how we think about the future and the future for our children and future grandchildren, and that means we’ve got to be kinder, and we have to be more compassionate and empathetic. … It all starts from home, just like who you are as a person. It all starts from your heart, and so you have to carry that forward.”
Hillary just loves everyday people!
As a lawmaker and diplomat, Clinton has long championed military campaigns that have killed scores of “everyday” people abroad, from Iraq to Yemen. As commander-in-chief, there’s no reason to believe she’d be any less a hawk than she was as the senator who backed George W. Bush’s war in Iraq, or the Secretary of State who encouraged Barack Obama to escalate the war in Afghanistan.
So, if you assume that Hillary is indeed inevitable, there are a few things that follow:
- a continuation of the culture of impunity for war criminals
- endless wars
- more amusing deaths
- more games of “bug splat” for everyday people
The great thing about America, though is that we get to freely choose our leaders.
There’s little chance the Republicans will nominate someone better, but given Clinton’s record as a senator and Secretary of State – the latter giving us a very good idea of how she would approach foreign affairs once in office – it will be hard for them to find anyone much worse.
So, what if Hillary is not inevitable?
What might Bernie Sanders foreign policy look like? Sanders is allegedly a socialist and has a portrait of Eugene V. Debs in his office. Isn’t that enough?
While Sanders is a big step up from Hillary in many ways, his record on matters of war and foreign policy is mixed. He voted for the AUMF in 2001. While he voted against the AUMF for Iraq, he’s voted for appropriations to fund the war. Sanders voted against the Patriot Act, but in 2006 voted to make the remaining provisions of it permanent and allow the FBI to conduct roving wiretaps. Sanders has also voted a billion dollars in aid to the fascist-dominated Ukraine government.
Like a typical politician vying for military pork investments in his state, Sanders has worked to get the F-35’s located in Burlington, Vermont.
But Bernie’s great on economic issues affecting “everyday people,” right?
So called progressive politicians who do not draw the link between corporate America’s wars and its attack on social security, health care, the minimum wage, forty- hour work week, and other issues working people consider important are doing us a disservice. The wars fought by the US military are ultimately fought for one reason only-to maintain and expand the power of corporate America at the expense of workers and the poor around the world.
Oh well, at least Bernie hasn’t cracked jokes about murdering people yet.
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