bomb after bomb

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[jimtzu]

some thoughts from the inimitable howard zinn

A Violent Cartography

Bomb After Bomb

By Howard Zinn

This essay serves as the introduction to Bomb After Bomb: a Violent Cartography, a collection of drawings illustrating the history of bombing by elin o'Hara slavick. o'Hara slavick is a professor of art at the University of North Carolina. More of her visionary work can be viewed on her website. AC / JSC

12/17/07 "Counterpunch" -- - Perhaps it is fitting that elin o'Hara slavick's extraordinary evocation of bombings by the United States government be preceded by some words from a bombardier who flew bombing missions for the U.S. Air Corps in the second World War. At least one of her drawings is based on a bombing I participated in near the very end of the war--the destruction of the French seaside resort of Royan, on the Atlantic coast.

As I look at her drawings, I become painfully aware of how ignorant I was, when I dropped those bombs on France and on cities in Germany, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, of the effects of those bombings on human beings. Not because she shows us bloody corpses, amputated limbs, skin shredded by napalm. She does not do that. But her drawings, in ways that I cannot comprehend, compel me to envision such scenes.

I am stunned by the thought that we, the "civilized" nations, have bombed cities and country sides and islands for a hundred years. Yet, here in the United States, which is responsible for most of that, the public, as was true of me, does not understand--I mean really understand--what bombs do to people. That failure of imagination, I believe, is critical to explaining why we still have wars, why we accept bombing as a common accompaniment to our foreign policies, without horror or disgust.

We in this country, unlike people in Europe or Japan or Africa or the Middle East, or the Caribbean, have not had the experience of being bombed. That is why, when the Twin Towers in New York exploded on September 11, there was such shock and disbelief. This turned quickly, under the impact of government propaganda, into a callous approval of bombing Afghanistan, and a failure to see that the corpses of Afghans were the counterparts of those in Manhattan.

 
more...  http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article18910.htm

My own reflections on my experiences as a bombardier, and my research on the wars of the United States have led me to certain conclusions about war and the dropping of bombs that accompany modern warfare.

One: The means of waging war (demolition bombs, cluster bombs, white phosphorus, nuclear weapons, napalm) have become so horrendous in their effects on human beings that no political end-- however laudable, the existence of no enemy -- however vicious, can justify war.

Two: The horrors of the means are certain, the achievement of the ends always uncertain.

Three: When you bomb a country ruled by a tyrant, you kill the victims of the tyrant.

Four: War poisons the soul of everyone who engages in it, so that the most ordinary of people become capable of terrible acts.

Five:Since the ratio of civilian deaths to military deaths in war has risen sharply with each subsequent war of the past century (10% civilian deaths in World War I,50% in World War II, 70% in Vietnam, 80-90% in Afghanistan and Iraq) and since a significant percentage of these civilians are children, then war is inevitably a war against children.

Six: We cannot claim that there is a moral distinction between a government which bombs and kills innocent people and a terrorist organization which does the same. The argument is made that deaths in the first case are accidental, while in the second case they are deliberate. However, it does not matter that the pilot dropping the bombs does not "intend" to kill innocent people -- that he does so is inevitable, for it is the nature of bombing to be indiscriminate. Even if the bombing equipment is so sophisticated that the pilot can target a house, a vehicle, there is never certainty about who is in the house or who is in the vehicle.

Seven: War, and the bombing that accompanies war, are the ultimate terrorism, for governments can command means of destruction on a far greater scale than any terrorist group.

These considerations lead me to conclude that if we care about human life, about justice, about the equal right of all children to exist, we must, in defiance of whatever we are told by those in authority, pledge ourselves to oppose all wars.

If the drawings of elin o'Hara slavick and the words that accompany them cause us to think about war, perhaps in ways we never did before, they will have made a powerful contribution towards a peaceful world.

[Jana]

Cool, thanks Michael I will read that tomorrow.

When a president instigates a false flag tower blasting in order to chase after oil and the preservation of the petroldollar recycling, and guts the constitution, and bleeds the tax payers dry and puts them into debt for eternity with foreign nations, that constitutes fascism. That is fascist capitalism backed by the full might of modern military power....Just wait and see what "theys" about to do next.

Israel’s Sept 6th Attack on Syria
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4uy95ecx2bY&feature=related
www.youtube.com/watch?v=RPFI_cafaDw&NR=1

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cLFBUrHPmNM&feature=related
In this interview Craig Roberts, a Republican says that we can expect a police state in 2008, and that Iran is likely to be targeted as a false flag operation like the Gulf of Tonkin, as there are 3 US carrier strike forces off the coast of Iran. Knocking one of these off must have been the idea behind the Minot-Barksdale missile thief. The 1964 Gulf of Tonkin Incident has been accused of being a false flag operation which was conducted by the US Navy, claiming that they were under attack by North Vietnamese gunboats. There is talk of Bush-Cheney canceling the next elections after starting the next crisis event.

US Climate talks in Honolulu Jan. 29 and 30. 17 major economies.

FBI's 'Five-and-Out' Transfer Policy Draws Criticism…It's an old FBI policy that Director Robert Mueller resurrected in 2004. It basically says that supervisors in the field can be there for five years and then are obliged to take an assignment at headquarters and keep moving through the management ranks. http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=17175490&ft=1&f=1012
Among the disaffected are hundreds of agents in field offices around the country who are suddenly facing forced transfers to FBI headquarters. About 900 supervisors in field offices are subject to the policy. Most are in their 40s, in the prime of their careers. http://fairuse.100webcustomers.com/fuj/latimes41.htm

Hell, I am just glad I am not an American or I might be disillusioned about my country...we NZ'ers have always felt the US was trouble.
This current history doesn't seem like it is "masterminded" though, it feels like the inevitable default programming of karmic patterning and an insane fixation on slogans and symbols, throwing bits and pieces of cultural persuasion around in an effort to brute force a financial agenda, as the "Haves" try to screw the last bit of blood and oil out of the "Havenots" in order to take war to space. Ha. Deal with it...I don't have to. Eventually I will find some tropical island somewhere away from hurricanes and nuc testing, DU fallout and GM crops, media propaganda, rising taxes, tax cuts, spam, ham, wham bam, rising oceans, melting glaciers, dying polar beers, away from forestors, insurance, phone sales people, stench of traffic, cardboard food, sleeping sheeps, militant medical, looneygoon presidents, false flags, military fuel tanker planes flying into buildings, religion against religion, race against race, meme against meme...and Ken would say its all the fault of the greens? Too much circle jerking and lack of decision making, that is what has bought about the fall. Ha...
Humanity has perhaps always been a mess, except for certain outstanding individuals that rose above the steaming throngs.


Believe in the future.
www.green-salon.com/aepc2008.htm
I have got to draw my attention away from the fall, and onto the postfall scenario.

[jimtzu]

A Look Back And Ahead

By Stephen Lendman

12/18/07 "ICH" -- - Year end is a good time to look back and reflect on what's ahead. If past is prologue, however, the outlook isn't good, and nothing on the horizon suggests otherwise. Voters last November wanted change but got betrayal from the bipartisan criminal class in Washington. Their attitude shows in an October Reuters/Zogby (RZ) opinion poll with George Bush at 24% that tops Richard Nixon's worst showing of 25% at his lowest 1974 Watergate point. And if that looks bad, consider Congress with "The Hill" reporting from the same RZ Index that our legislators scored a "staggering 11%, the lowest (congressional) rating in history," but there's room yet to hit bottom and a year left to do it. Why not with lawmakers' consistent voter sellout and failure record that keeps getting worse.

It's been that way ever since 9/11 with both sides of the aisle complicit with the administration. This article looks back at the record, and year end is a good time to review it. It's hard imagining another as bad with a President defiling the law and once telling Republican colleagues the Constitution is "just a goddamned piece of paper."

He didn't just say it. He governs by it, gets away with it, and former Defense Department analyst Daniel Ellsberg, of Pentagon Papers fame, says "a coup has occurred (with another to come from) the next 9/11....that completes the first (that's) seen a steady assault on every fundamental (aspect) of our Constitution (to create) an executive government (to) rule by decree" no different from a police state.

and a lot more.....  http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article18918.htm

[Jana]

"The dangerous men and women around Bush will regard the election as nothing less than a ringing endorsement of their attitude to the rest of the world. So the instrumental value of international law and justice, the reputation and credibility of liberal democracy and the human rights associated with it, the future of multilateralism in the management of global affairs, and the just cause of liberal interventionism, will all be harmed in the coming years. Bush's America is not hated for what it is, but for what its president stands for. The US will begin to be hated for what it is. We are on the cusp of a new Cold War, only this time with the US as the paiah, shunned by all but a few client-state accomplices." Richard Calland, South Africa, November 2004

"I quote this prediction because I consider it to be probable, the least probable being the "cold" part." MMD

"When the Taliban came into power, they reduced the flow of opium out of the country to a trickle. Now, it has once again achieved its previous production levels.
By mid-December'02, 1000 or more Qaeda operatives, including most of the chief planners and almost certainly Osama bin Laden himself, had managed to escape. [from the caves at Tora Bora]. ...Others, including pro-US warlord Hazrat Ali, claim that mysterious black helicopters swept in, flying low over the mountains at night and scooped up Al Qaeda's top leaders." MMD

Since Al Queda was paid off as patsy for the 911 attack they were under the protection of black ops special forces, (perhaps the same guys that mind the opium trade) while at the same time it had to appear that the US was going after them with all they had. Anyone care to speculate where the 200 Bin Laden's from the US and these Al Qaeda's top leaders went to? What country?

[Michael]