This video shows the murder of Iraqi civilians, and two Reuters journalists. As the video explains, the media worked with the government at the time to cover it up, and said they had all been combatants. This video was leaked to Wikileaks by a soldier named Bradley Manning. Manning said in an online chat: "God knows what happens now. Hopefully worldwide discussion, debates, and reforms… I want people to see the truth… because without information, you cannot make informed decisions as a public."
He was arrested for releasing this video in May 2010. Since then, Manning has been held in conditions that have been compared to Abu Ghraib. He has been stripped of his clothes, forced to sleep naked, harassed and humiliated by guards, and at one point he was placed on suicide watch. A United Nations investigator on torture submitted an inquiry to the U.S. State Department, and was answered with evasiveness. A spokesman for the State Department resigned. In April, 295 scholars signed an open letter saying this was violating the Constitution. Only then, did the State Dept. have enough fun, and finally transfer Manning to a prison with slightly more humane conditions. He's still being held and he still has not been convicted of any crimes.
Daniel Ellsberg, the man who leaked the Pentagon Papers, which exposed the government's massive campaign of lies over Vietnam, considers Manning a hero. "[Manning] is being held essentially in isolation, solitary confinement, for something over nine months, something that is likely to drive a person mad and may be the intent of what’s going on here."
Barack Obama has supported this every step of the way. He said of Manning, "If I was to release stuff, information that I’m not authorized to release, I’m breaking the law. … We’re a nation of laws. We don’t individually make our own decisions about how the laws operate. … He broke the law.” You know what else is against the law? Torture.
I don't understand the American left right now. Liberals are acting frighteningly similar to Bush apologists. They either don't comment on Manning at all, or they're with the president and they don't give a shit about psychologically torturing an army veteran.
And they've completely forgotten about the wars. When did these stop being an issue? The Occupy protests are only about jobs and a corrupt economic system? What about fucking thousands of innocent people being killed, and countries being leveled? Isn't this still important? I saw most liberals hailed the troop withdrawal in Iraq as a great victory, and they promptly thanked Obama for it. But none of them seem to know or care that Obama wanted to keep 10,000 troops in Iraq, and it was only the Iraqi Prime Minister's insistence on American troops being held accountable for crimes they commit, that forced Obama to cut his losses. Had American troops stayed, they would've had to stand trial in Iraqi courts if they murdered civilians. Obama tried to fight that, but he lost. His failed foreign policy is the only reason we're finally getting out of Iraq. That's your great president.
We went into Afghanistan to get al-Qaeda. Now, Osama bin Laden is dead, al-Qaeda likely has less than a hundred members left, and they're not even in Afghanistan anymore, they're in Pakistan. So what the fuck are we doing?
The fight in Afghanistan is hopeless. More and more Afghans are siding with the Taliban, not because they like the Taliban, but because they just want the U.S. and Afghanistan's corrupt puppet drug lord government to stop bombing their fucking families. And the thing is, there are democratic movements emerging from Afghanistan, and the U.S. refuses to support them. There are 1.5 times more contractors on the ground in Afghanistan then there are U.S. soldiers. This is about nationbuilding contracts. It's about getting people rich, no different from Iraq, no different from Libya. Afghanistan is not a war that's meant to be won. It's meant to be sustained.
Obama is proposing a troop drawdown from Afghanistan. But when that drawdown is complete, there will still be more troops left there than at any other time under Bush. There is no fucking plan. Afghanistan and Iraq never stopped being the most important issues for me. Doesn't anybody fucking care about this anymore? Have we just become so numb, that perpetual warfare is now the norm? Remember when we were pissed off about meaningless wars, guys? Remember the good ol' days when we were all "George Bush, you fascist, not my president, rah rah!" What changed?
Josh Stieber served with the army in Iraq from February 2007 to April 2008, but has since left as a conscientious objector. He said of the wikileaks "Collateral Murder" video, "This was not by any means the exception. It is inevitable given the situation we were going through. We were going through a lot of combat at the time. A roadside bomb would go off or a sniper would fire a shot, and you had no idea where it was coming from. There was a constant paranoia, a constant being on edge. If you put people in a situation like that where there are plenty of civilians, that kind of thing was going to happen as long as our nation does not challenge these things. Now that this video has become public, it is our responsibility as a people and a country to recognize that this is what war looks like on a day-to-day basis."
Afghanistan has been going on for a decade. This shit happens all the time. If you vote for Barack Obama in 2012, you are going to accept that and keep the process continuing. I don't know how I could live with myself.
And it's not just Afghanistan we need to be worrying about. Obama has stepped up drone strikes all around the region, and hundreds, if not thousands, of innocent people have been murdered by them. The majority are women and children. And if empathy for other human beings won't convince you, then how about your own survival? Do you recognize this guy?
Anwar al-Awlaki was born in New Mexico. He was a recruiter for al-Qaeda, and may have been involved in the botched terrorist attack on Flight 253 on Christmas Day, 2009 (the "underwear bomber"). He was assassinated by a drone strike a few weeks ago. And that needs to worry us all. Even George W. Bush tried to apprehend terrorist suspects. Obama just kills them, and their American citizenship is irrelevant. Do you even understand what this means? The rights we're supposed to enjoy as American citizens are now null and void. If the government deems you a terrorist, it's going to come and kill you. You won't get a trial. You won't be convicted of a crime. You will be murdered, and you will be swept under the rug. What are you going to do about it?
Abdulrahman al-Awlaki couldn't do anything about it. Two weeks ago, Anwar's 16-year-old son was sitting down to eat dinner with his friends. Then a drone missile killed them all. He was also an American. He was from Denver.
The few media outlets that actually acknowledged Obama's bombing of innocent teenagers simply lied about it. They said Abdulrahman was 21. His grandfather released a statement: "To kill a teenager is just unbelievable, really, and they claim that he is an al-Qaeda militant. It’s nonsense. They want to justify his killing, that’s all."
This is inexcusable. I voted for Barack Obama in 2008 expecting this shit to stop. Not only has it not stopped, it has been escalated. The military-industrial complex is more powerful than ever, with trillions of dollars being sucked into it every year. These things are going to continue no matter who you vote for. And if you vote for Obama, you will hold a degree of responsibility. I voted for Barack Obama in 2008. I'm responsible for Abdulrahman al-Awlaki's murder. I refuse to get any more blood on my hands. And maybe if a Republican got into office, liberals would actually start caring about this shit again.
And what of the accomplishments Obama has made? Well, Don't Ask Don't Tell is repealed, which is a wonderful thing. But it's not like Obama fought terribly hard for it. I don't want to demean him too much on this issue, because he really has been good with LGBT rights, but it's just that public opinion concerning DADT began swaying in the other direction, and so Obama rode it. And what about the healthcare bill? Well, it's a Republican bill. When Bill Clinton tried to do this in the 90s, Bob Dole and a group of Republicans put together their own health care plan to answer to him. It's almost exactly similar to what Obama got passed. Clinton decided not to accept it, and fight. He lost. So we're left Obama's bill, basically written by corporate interests. There's no public option, and it forces people to buy shitty deals, which doesn't help the poorest, sickest of Americans. It's a mess. He didn't even fight for the public option. As soon as Republicans raised a peep, he backed off. And there's a reason for this. This is from Samuel Huntington, a political science professor at Harvard, and a long-time consultant to the White House during the war in Vietnam:
The day after [a President’s] election, the size of his majority is almost—if not entirely—irrelevant to this ability to govern the country. What counts then is his ability to mobilize support from the leaders of key institutions in a society and government… . This coalition must include key people in Congress, the executive branch, and the private sector ‘Establishment.’
Truman made a point of bringing a substantial number of non-partisan soldiers, Republican bankers, and Wall Street lawyers into his Administration. He went to the existing sources of power in the country to get help he needed in ruling the country. Eisenhower in part inherited this coalition and was in part almost its creation… . Kennedy attempted to re-create a somewhat similar structure of alliances.
Advocates of the two-party system say that third parties split the vote. Ralph Nader got a lot of shit for this in 2000. They say that if everyone who voted Green had voted Democrat, then Al Gore would've won.
First of all, the 2000 election was stolen. George Bush didn't win. These people are also overlooking a very important fact: people who voted for Nader did not want Al Gore to be President. What makes you think they would've voted for Gore at all, had Nader not been running? They just would've sat it out. And furthermore, sitting there and demeaning a candidate--not because of actual policies, but simply because he's not your candidate--is pretty damn childish.
And what makes you think either of the two major parties even care about you? Barack Obama received more money from Wall Street this year than all nine GOP candidates combined. He doesn't fucking answer to you. Neither party gives a shit about you, and neither gives a shit about democracy. George W. Bush stole the election in 2000, but you're kidding yourself if you think Republicans are the only party that hates democracy. In 2004, the Democratic Party sued the Green Party 24 separate times, in only 12 weeks, to get them off ballots. They don't give the slightest shit about what people actually want.
America is a one party state. Have you ever wondered why American elections have degraded into a personality contests, where nobody ever talks about anything that's fucking important? It's because they don't want to. And the media's complacent in this. As soon as they start talking about important topics, the American people will see just how little they differ on them. Here's Noam Chomsky talking about this:
Voting in the 2012 election will have the exact same impact as not voting at all. Al Gore won the popular vote in 2000, and George W. Bush still won. And our elections are still being stolen to this day. So if voting is meaningless, then why bother vote for a third party at all? The reason I'll be doing it personally, is that there's a stigma attached to not voting. People think that if you don't vote, you don't care. I don't think there's any other topic in my life that I think more about, really. So I don't want to be attached to those statistics that say only half the country votes, therefore half the country is ignorant and doesn't care. And I won't even be voting for Green I don't think, I'll be writing in the Socialist candidate. There are a lot of options out there, do a little research. Going about as if you live in a democracy, while living in an undemocratic state, is probably the most revolutionary act you can do as a law-abiding citizen. I'm basically just trolling by doing this. Fuck them.
And even if you do vote for one of the two major parties, it still won't make any difference. U.S. policy is bipartisan. The president doesn't even have all that much power to decide what U.S. policy is. The president answers to corporate business interests, and to some extent, the military and the CIA. A couple months ago, a report was released claiming the Obama Administration feared a military coup if he pursued Bush for his war crimes. I'm not sure if I believe that, but with the shit the CIA's done, I wouldn't put it past them. At the end of Eisenhower's administration, he began to seriously worry about the power and influence of the CIA, and even spoke about it openly in his farewell address. During the Cuban missile crisis, the commander of the Air Force put the U.S. military on the second-to-highest alert without telling anybody. What this means, is that he put the entire military into attack position. This is only one alert away from pulling the trigger, and it was not meant to be secret. The Soviets clearly saw what the Americans were doing, and it was meant to provoke them into attacking. The commander did this entirely on his own, without asking Kennedy, and he would've sparked World War III had the Soviets risen to the bait. Luckily, they were scared shitless of us and wanted to avoid a war at all costs. And during Kennedy's administration, the CIA just got out of fucking control, going so far as to propose committing terrorist attacks against American citizens. No, really. Go read that. And I don't think the CIA killed Kennedy, so don't try to blow this off as conspiracy bullshit. These things happened. That was 50 years ago, and the CIA's power has only increased. That agency has no oversight, their leadership is made up of racist neocon fanatics, and with the Patriot Act continuing unopposed, they're practically in control the government. What are you going to do about it?
Chris Hedges, in Death of the Liberal Class, talks about something called "inverted totalitarianism."
The liberal class refused to resist the devolution of the U.S. democratic system into what Sheldon Wolin calls a system of inverted totalitarianism. Inverted totalitarianism, Wolin writes, represents "the political coming of age of corporate power and the political demobilization of the citizenry." Inverted totalitarianism differs from classical forms of totalitarianism, which revolve around a demagogue or charismatic leader. It find its expression in the anonymity of the corporate state. The corporate forces behind inverted totalitarianism do not, as classical totalitarian movements do, replace decaying structures with new, revolutionary structures. They do not import new symbols of iconography. They do not offer a radical alternative. Corporate power purports, in inverted totalitarianism, to honor electoral politics, freedom, and the Constitution. But these corporate forces so corrupt and manipulate power as to make democracy impossible.
Inverted totalitarianism is not conceptualized as an ideology or objectified public policy. It is furthered by "power-holders and citizens who often seem unaware of the deeper consequences of their actions or inactions," Wolin writes. But it is not necessary to rewrite the Constitution, as fascist and communist regimes would. It is enough to exploit legitimate power by means of judicial and legislative interpretation. This exploitation ensures that the courts, populated by justices selected and ratified by members of the corporate culture, rule that huge corporate campaign contributions are protected speech under the First Amendment. It ensures that heavily financed and organized lobbying by large corporations is interpreted as an application of the people's right to petition the government. Corporations are treated by the state as persons, as the increasingly conservative U.S. Supreme Court has more and more frequently ruled, except in those cases where the "persons" agree to a "settlement." Those within corporations who commit crimes can avoid going to prison by paying large sums of money to the government without "admitting any wrongdoing," according to this twisted judicial reasoning. There is a word for this: corruption.
[...]
There is no national institution left that can accurately be described as democratic. Citizens, rather than authentically participating in power, have only virtual opinions, in what Charlotte Twight calls "participatory fascism." They are reduced to expressing themselves on issues that are meaningless, voting on American Idol or in polls conducted by the power elite. The citizens of Rome, stripped of political power, are allowed to vote to spare or kill a gladiator in the arena, a similar form of hollow public choice.
Voting in a serious way is actually counterproductive in my opinion, because it gives you a false sense of security. It makes you think you actually hold some degree of power. You don't. You don't live in a democracy. You don't pick the candidates. Political parties financed and influenced by private capitalists pick your candidates. If I'm making you feel a little hopeless right now, then good. I went through that phase, and it lasted for a couple weeks. Then I accepted it, and the hopelessness was channeled into anger. It's difficult to describe just how fucking angry I've become over the last couple months, and that's probably been resonating in this post. And I only get more angry the more I read about this shit, and I can't stop reading about it. Did you know I'm beginning to understand Marxist revolutionaries, and even anarchism? I don't want to understand those people. That's how bad it's gotten. In an undemocratic society, anger is a gift. It's yours, and it's the only amount of power you can ever hope to have.
