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COMMENTARY
Kerry and the Gift of Impunity
by
Naomi Klein
[from the December 13, 2004 issue of The Nation]
Iconic images inspire love and hate, and so it is with the photograph
of James Blake Miller, the 20-year-old Marine from Appalachia who has
been christened "the face of Falluja" by prowar pundits and "The
Marlboro Man" by pretty much everyone else. Reprinted in more than a
hundred newspapers, the Los Angeles Times photograph shows Miller
"after more than twelve hours of nearly nonstop deadly combat" in
Falluja, his face coated in war paint, a bloody scratch on his nose, and
a freshly lit cigarette hanging from his lips.
Gazing lovingly at Miller, Dan Rather confessed that, "for me, this
is personal.... This is a warrior with his eyes on the far horizon,
scanning for danger. See it, study it, absorb it. Think about it. Then
take a deep breath of pride. And if your eyes don't dampen, you're a
better man or woman than I." A few days later, the LA Times
declared that its photo had "moved into the realm of the iconic." In
truth, the image just feels iconic because it is so laughably
derivative: It's a straight-up rip-off of the most powerful icon in
American advertising (the Marlboro Man), which in turn imitated the
brightest star ever created by Hollywood (John Wayne) who was himself
channeling America's most powerful founding myth (the cowboy on the
rugged frontier). It's like a song you feel like you've heard a thousand
times before--because you have.
But never mind that. For a country that just elected a wannabe
Marlboro Man as its President, Miller is an icon, and as if to prove it
he has ignited his very own controversy. "Lots of children, particularly
boys, play 'army' and like to imitate this young man. The clear message
of the photo is that the way to relax after a battle is with a
cigarette," wrote Daniel Maloney in a scolding letter to the Houston
Chronicle. Linda Ortman made the same point to the editors of the
Dallas Morning News: "Are there no photos of nonsmoking soldiers in
Iraq?" A reader of the New York Post suggested more politically
correct propaganda imagery: "Maybe showing a Marine in a tank, helping
another GI or drinking water, would have a more positive impact on your
readers."
Yes, that's right: Letter-writers from across the nation are united
in their outrage--not that the steely-eyed smoking soldier makes mass
killing look cool but that the laudable act of mass killing makes the
grave crime of smoking look cool. It reminds me of the joke about the
Hasidic rabbi who says all sexual positions are acceptable except for
one: standing up, "because that could lead to dancing."
On second thought, perhaps Miller does deserve to be elevated to the
status of icon--not of the war in Iraq but of the new era of
supercharged American impunity. Because outside US borders, it is, of
course, a different Marine who has been awarded the prize as "the face
of Falluja": the soldier captured on tape executing a wounded, unarmed
prisoner in a mosque. Runners-up are a photograph of 2-year-old Fallujan
in a hospital bed with one of his tiny legs blown off; a dead child
lying in the street, clutching the headless body of an adult; and an
emergency health clinic blasted to rubble. Inside the United States,
these snapshots of a lawless occupation appeared only briefly, if at
all. Yet Miller's icon status has endured, kept alive with human
interest stories about fans sending cartons of Marlboros to Falluja,
interviews with the Marine's proud mother and earnest discussions about
whether smoking might reduce Miller's effectiveness as a fighting
machine.
Impunity--the perception of being outside the law--has long been the
hallmark of the Bush regime. What is alarming is that it appears to have
deepened since the election, ushering in what can best be described as
an orgy of impunity. In Iraq, US forces and their Iraqi surrogates are
assaulting civilian targets and openly attacking doctors, clerics and
journalists who have dared to count the bodies. At home, impunity has
been made official policy with Bush's nomination of Alberto
Gonzales--the man who personally advised the President in his infamous
"torture memo" that the Geneva Conventions are "obsolete"--as Attorney
General.
This kind of defiance cannot simply be explained by Bush's win. There
has to be something in how he won, in how the election was fought, that
gave this Administration the distinct impression that it had been handed
a "get out of the Geneva Conventions free" card. That's because the
Administration was handed precisely such a gift--by John Kerry.
In the name of "electability," the Kerry campaign gave Bush five
months on the campaign trail without ever facing serious questions about
violations of international law. Fearing he would be seen as soft on
terror and disloyal to US troops, Kerry stayed scandalously silent about
Abu Ghraib and Guantánamo Bay. When it became clear that fury would rain
down on Falluja as soon as the polls closed, Kerry never spoke out
against the plan, or against the illegal bombings of civilian areas that
took place throughout the campaign. Even after The Lancet
published its landmark study estimating that 100,000 Iraqis had died as
a result of the invasion and occupation, Kerry repeated his outrageous
(and frankly racist) claim that Americans "have borne 90 percent of the
casualties in Iraq." His unmistakable message: Iraqi deaths don't count.
By buying the highly questionable logic that Americans are incapable of
caring about anyone's lives but their own, the Kerry campaign and its
supporters became complicit in the dehumanization of Iraqis, reinforcing
the idea that some lives are insufficiently important to risk losing
votes over. And it is this morally bankrupt logic, more than the
election of any single candidate, that allows these crimes to continue
unchecked.
The real-world result of all the "strategic" thinking is the worst of
both worlds: It didn't get Kerry elected and it sent a clear message to
the people who were elected that they will pay no political price for
committing war crimes. And this is Kerry's true gift to Bush: not just
the presidency, but impunity. You can see it perhaps best of all in the
Marlboro Man in Falluja, and the surreal debates that swirl around him.
Genuine impunity breeds a kind of delusional decadence, and this is its
face: a nation bickering about smoking while Iraq burns.
###
Iraq's Lose-Lose Scenario
By Mark LeVine, Dept. of History, UC
Irvine
Informed Comment, 25 November 2004
EXCERPT: The ostensible "victory" of US forces in Falluja marks a
strategic turning point for the United States, but not because it has
come close to destroying the insurgency. Rather, it has revealed a lack
of solidarity between Shi‘i and Sunni Iraqis that is the United States’
only hope for maintaining a long-term presence in the country after the
elections. Such lack of solidarity is in contrast to the mutual aid and
support displayed during the Falluja and Najaf invasions of last spring.
Had it been translated into coordinated Sunni-Shi‘i resistance--Sadr
City exploding along with Falluja-- the occupation would have quickly
become untenable.
Indeed, as the human, moral and material toll of the occupation
skyrocketed, most Iraqi Arabs, Shi‘a and Sunnis alike, have come to
abhor the American presence along with an Allawi government viewed as
little more than an American puppet. We don’t have to look far to figure
out why they: 100,000 deaths and counting, untold billions of dollars of
property and infrastructure damage, a barely-functioning health system,
massive unemployment, and official corruption that is so pervasive that
one of Prime Minister’s senior advisors described the Government to me
as “Saddam with new faces”--all are better recruiting tools for an
insurgency than a dozen bin Laden and Zarqawi videos.
###
A wrecked
nation, a desert, a ghost town. And this will be called victory
Simon Jenkins
TimeOnLine, 17 November 2004
EXCERPT:
Nothing in Iraq has so illumined the folly of this occupation as the now
completed suppression of Fallujah. When Napoleon entered Moscow in 1812
after the Battle of Borodino, he was mystified. He too found a city
emptied of people. He found buildings aflame on all sides. There was no
enemy to admit defeat and no one to supply his troops. The Muscovites
had simply melted away, taking their food and their pride with them.
Napoleon had conquered not an empire but a desert, and that desert
eventually consumed his army and forced its retreat.
...Without Fallujah under control, it was argued, elections would be
hopeless.
Yet hopeless too must be the holding of Fallujah. Such cities cannot
be subjugated by American troops for any period of time. The new Iraq
Army, virtually useless in the assault, cannot take their place. They
would desert en masse, as 400 reportedly did during the siege. The only
Iraqi troops prepared to fight the Sunnis are their sworn enemies, the
Kurdish peshmerga irregulars. To leave them garrisoning Fallujah would
be madness. As for the repopulation of the city — from which 90 per cent
of citizens are said to have fled — this will bring back the guerrillas
and put the Americans under renewed attack.
...The insurgency has now spread west, north and east, to Ramadi,
Mosul and Samarra. Guerrillas supposedly driven from Samarra in a
furious battle just two months ago are now back. Aerial bombardment was
this week deployed against the small town of Baquba just north of
Baghdad, with inevitable civilian casualties. How long before the battle
for Baghdad resumes, and its inhabitants again hear the drone of spy
planes and the roar of “shock and awe”?
...No statement about Iraq is more absurd than that “we must stay to
finish the job”. What job? A dozen more Fallujahs? The thesis that
leaving Iraq would plunge it into anarchy and warlordism defies the
facts on the ground. Iraq south of Kurdistan is in a state of anarchy
already, a land of suicide bombings, kidnapping, hijackings and gangland
mayhem. There is no law or order, no public administration or police or
proper banking. Its streets are Wild West. The occupying force is
entombed in bases it can barely defend or supply. Occasional patrols are
target practice for terrorists. Iraq is a desert in which the Americans
and British rule nothing but their forts, like the French Foreign Legion
in the Sahara.
###
[Having experienced the
'military community' for more than thirty years, I can report with
certainty about the influence of a constantly reinforced cultural 'group
think.' The military's ingrained view of the world drives an ideological
commitment to a militaristic and radical rightwing perspective among
most of its members. Individuals choosing to join this 'community'
must be responsible and accountable for their actions. The idea that
nationalistic patriotism makes them immune from judgments about their
morality and accountability for unlawful behavior is despicable. An
expression of unqualified belief that our military must be excused from
normal societal and spiritual standards is a mark of the depths to which
radical conservatives and fundamentalist Christians have sunk in terms
of moral and ethical
principles. - BWUSA]
When the attack came, the first target was Falluja General Hospital.
The New York Times explained why: "The offensive also shut down
what officers said was a propaganda weapon for the militants: Falluja
General Hospital, with its stream of reports of civilian casualties." If
there were no hospital, there would be no visible casualties; if there
were no visible casualties, there would be no international outrage, and
all would be well. What of those civilians who remained? No men of
military age were permitted to leave during the attack. Remaining
civilians were trapped in their apartments with no electricity or water.
No one knows how many of them have been killed, and no official group
has any plans to find out. The city itself is a ruin. "A drive through
the city revealed a picture of utter destruction," the Independent
of Britain reports, "with concrete houses flattened, mosques in ruins,
telegraph poles down, power and phone lines hanging slack and rubble and
human remains littering the empty streets."
-- What Happened to Hearts?
By Jonathan Schell at TomDispatch.com
Oppose the War and the Warriors
"Supporting These Troops?"
By JOHN MARCIANO
CounterPunch, 17 November 2004
EXCERPT:
...How do we support U.S. soldiers who execute policies condemned by the
Nuremberg Tribunal in language that clearly places individual
responsibility above merely following immoral and illegal orders? Troops
who reject illegal orders are harshly punished by authorities, however,
as we see from the handful of decorous soldiers being court-martialed
for refusing to kill in Iraq and the thousands who resisted during the
Vietnam War. If we take the Nuremberg code to heart, however, should not
the courageous soldiers who refuse unjust orders be the ones we support?
If the war against Iraq is an atrocity, how do we support the Marine
Corporal, one of a group of US snipers that killed hundreds of Iraqis in
Fallujah, who coldly stated: "Sometimes a guy will go down, and I'll let
him scream a bit to destroy the morale of his buddies then I'll use a
second shot." With 24 "confirmed kills" to his credit, this Marine
concluded: "I couldn't have asked to be in a better place. I just got
lucky: to be here at the right time and with the right training" (Los
Angeles Times, 4/19/04). "Supporting the troops" is not some abstract
slogan but a belief that must confront the actions of the Marine quoted
above and others who stated: "We had a great day today. We killed a lot
of people"; "The Iraqis are sick people and we are the chemotherapy."
It means supporting thousands who appear to embrace this mission as well
as the antiwar veterans and their families in the Bring Them Home Now
movement that oppose the conflict and are organizing against it.
In the words of writer Arundhati Roy, this mission "will surely go down
in history as one of the most cowardly wars. in which a band of rich
nations, armed with enough nuclear weapons to destroy the world several
times over, rounded on a poor nation, falsely accused it of having
nuclear weapons, used the United Nations to force it to disarm, then
invaded it, occupied it and are now in the process of selling it"
("Sydney Morning Herald," 11/4/04).
Millions in the U.S. who oppose this war nonetheless claim to support
those who carry out the terror it necessarily entails. Such a position
appears to rest on the principle that U.S. soldiers' lives are more
precious than Iraqis' a view that cannot be defended on any
philosophical or religious grounds. We must acknowledge that these
soldiers have not truly made a free choice given the class nature of our
economic draft, and the Marine quoted above and others like him are
trained to become uncritical warriors. However, it appears that most in
Iraq are executing their orders faithfully rather than refusing those
that violate U.S. and international law. Conscience and law, therefore,
obligate us to oppose both the war and the warriors who embrace it, to
see the conflict for what it truly is: a crime against humanity.
###
Purge at the CIA
Josh Marshall
Talking Points Memo, 15 November 2004
EXCERPT: ...the larger point is simple and clear. On every significant
point of conflict between the Bush administration and the country's
cadre of intelligence professionals, the Bush political appointees
turned out to be wrong. Often very wrong, and with disastrous
consequences. Sometimes the intel folks were wrong too; but when that
was so, the appointees were always more wrong.
This is not argumentative or hyperbole or even up for much serious
dispute.
And the upshot of all that we've seen, the result of all those struggles
over the last three years is that the 'appointees' are purging the
'professionals'. Another way to put it is that the folks who were always
wrong and often catastrophically wrong are rooting out the folks who
were often right and sometimes somewhat wrong. The answer to politicized
intelligence, it turns out, is a more thorough politicization of
intelligence and the elimination of those who resisted political
pressure.
16 November 2004
BOOK
RECOMMENDATIONS
When Presidents Lie: A History of Official Deception and Its
Consequences
by Eric Alterman
From Publisher's Weekly
 Mendacity
has increasingly become a journalistic touchstone for analyzing
America's international relations. Alterman, best known as a columnist
for the Nation and author of What Liberal Media?, presents his case for
what he calls four key lies U.S. presidents told world citizens during
the 20th century. Franklin Roosevelt lied, he says, about the nature of
the Yalta accords, creating the matrix for a half-century of anti-Soviet
paranoia. John F. Kennedy lied about the compromise that settled the
Cuban missile crisis, and kept the Cold War alive by humiliating the
U.S.S.R. Lyndon Johnson lied about the second Tonkin Gulf incident, and
moved the U.S. down a slippery slope that destroyed his hopes of
creating a Great Society. Ronald Reagan lied about his policies in
Central America, creating a secret and illegal foreign policy that
resulted in "the murder of tens of thousands of innocents." Alterman
interprets this pattern as a consequence of mistaken American beliefs:
belief in providence watching over the U.S., belief in American moral
superiority abroad and belief, unfulfilled, in unyielding commitment to
democracy at home all of these things are easy to stump on, but
impossible, Alterman argues, to demonstrate. These "delusions" in turn
create an unrealistic picture of the world, one immune to education
regarding reality. All of this, predictably enough, leads to George W.
Bush, whose administration is dismissed as a "post-truth presidency."
The American-centered perspective of Alterman's case studies overlooks
the many times when the U.S. was outmaneuvered (or deceived) by other
players to a point where truth became obscured by means other than
executive mendacity. Alterman also allows little room for mistakes or
plain incompetence on the part of the administrations in question. But
his conceit is otherwise carefully and compellingly executed, and sets
the stage for debate.
Fraud: The Strategy Behind the Bush Lies and Why The Media Didn't
Tell You
Paul Waldman
 From
the publisher:
In Fraud, leading political and media analyst Paul Waldman exposes the
truth behind the rise of George W. Bush. What is revealed is more
shocking than just a pattern of lies and incompetence. It is the story
of how a clever political machine built a high-stakes game of deception,
a policy of lies to capture the highest office in the free world, a
fraud that continues to this day.
How to Build a Fraud:
-Portray son of one of America¹s most influential families as down-home
Texan
-Berate media as "liberal" until they stop asking tough questions
-Take advantage of reporters¹ tendency to not check the facts
-Mask reactionary policies in compassionate words and pictures
-Push false stories from right-wing media into mainstream media
-Extol the virtues of workers while systematically pushing an anti-labor
agenda
-Propose a series of tax cuts aimed at the wealthy, but sell them as a
boon to ordinary Americans
-Disguise destructive initiatives with friendly sounding names
-Befriend media with "genuine guy" routine
-Keep the public from accessing information
-Maintain message discipline at all times
-Question patriotism of anyone who disagrees
-Repeat above until it all seems true
At some point, George W. Bush took a good long look at who he was and
what he wanted for the country and decided that the American people
would never buy it if he gave it to them straight. So Bush and his
political machine made their decision: the American people would have to
be lied to. They would construct a persona that would be everything Bush
was not.
They would take the same reactionary agenda and cloak it in comforting
catchphrases and pleasing visuals, presenting to the public a false
image of sympathy.
And they would repeat this message endlessly.
The power of the fraud lies in the ability of the Bush machine to
manipulate the press, and thereby avoid having the truth exposed.
Waldman¹s findings reveal an astonishing record of how the nation¹s
media has not only given Bush a pass again and again, but have failed to
follow up on even the most openly dishonest parts of the Bush agenda.
For all Americans who have been uneasy about the honesty of the Bush
administration, but unsure what it means or how far it goes, Fraud is a
shocking wake-up call.
SYNOPSIS
The Bush II presidency, argues political and media commentator Waldman,
is an epic fraud founded on a media enabled myth of George W. Bush as an
amiable dunce. He argues that nearly everything the Bush administration
does, from its "Clean Air" initiative to the war in Iraq is predicated
on simplistic rhetoric that is purposely designed to manipulate the
American public. He explores the strategies Bush and his handlers have
used to obscure the facts behind his war, economic initiatives, and
attacks on democracy and examines the way the administration has managed
to make the media fear them.
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