The Free Press -- Independent News Media

Sat Mar 20 2010

Departments
National Issues

Geo-insanity's latest mutation
by Robert C. Koehler
April 13, 2009

As our warrior robot drones eradicate evil — or at least “militancy” — from above, the Suicide Army of the East vows to keep blowing itself up until we call them off.

This is not the plot of a bad sci-fi thriller. It’s page one of the New York Times, described, as ever, with a sober politeness that doesn’t quite do justice to geo-insanity’s latest thrilling mutation:

“Despite threats of retaliation from Pakistani militants, senior administration officials said Monday that the United States intended to step up its use of drones to strike militants in Pakistan’s tribal areas and might extend them to a different sanctuary deeper inside the country.

“On Sunday, a senior Taliban leader vowed to unleash two suicide attacks a week like one on Saturday in Pakistan’s capital, Islamabad, unless the Central Intelligence Agency stopped firing missiles at militants.”

And by the way: “Pakistani officials have expressed concerns that the missile strikes from remotely piloted aircraft fuel more violence in the country, and some American officials say they are also concerned about some aspects of the drone strikes.”

What has ever mattered less to the war machine than “concerns” . . . that robot killers don’t win friends, that violence, perhaps, is counterproductive? Women, children, collateral damage, blah blah blah. Sen. Carl Levin, Michigan Democrat, head of the Senate Armed Services Committee, good-guy-turned-war-enabler, “acknowledged,” as the Times put it — or as I might say, channeled every morally compromised spokesperson who ever equivocated in the name of George Bush, Adolf Hitler or Attila the Hun — that “the price is very heavy.”

Now we know.

But alas, as Levin went on to explain, drone-fired missiles are “an extremely effective tool.” And really, they’re no more than a technical update of the innovation that allowed the English to slaughter French noblemen at the battle of Crecy in 1346 and ushered in modern, impersonal warfare: the longbow. One difference is that the dead at Crecy were all soldiers.

In any case, “The principle . . . is action at a distance,” Barbara Ehrenreich points out in “Blood Rites,” her 1997 study of the roots of war. And action at a distance, as Sen. Levin could explain to you, has the advantage of allowing the heavy price to be paid only by the other side.

To wit: “As many as 1 million people have fled their homes in the Tribal Areas to escape attacks by the unmanned spy planes as well as bombings by the Pakistani army,” London’s Sunday Times reports, describing the situation on the Af-Pak border as “a massive humanitarian emergency.”

Our longbows are flattening villages. Furthermore, while “Pakistani forces say they have killed 1,500 militants since launching anti-Taliban operations in Bajaur (Pakistan) in August,” the Sunday Times story continues, “locals who fled claim that only civilians were killed.” History, common sense and objective analysis, even by the U.S. military, make clear that the tactics the U.S. is using — first with Bush at the helm, now with Barack Obama — are fostering hatred of the West and strengthening the Taliban.

All of which does nothing but make the point I’ve already made, that the war on terror that President Obama says he wants to widen, and win, in Afghanistan, is insane. Since Obama is neither insane himself nor indebted politically to a base that is, the enormous post-inaugural question we are now wrestling with is: Why is he pursuing it? And why are the Democrats so intent on fracturing their party in the pursuit of a war that is flawed at its core, just as they did in the ’60s?

To quote from a comment made on Common Dreams in response to a piece I wrote last week about the new president and the war: “Demopublicans and Republicrats only see a narrow world of $elf-intere$t run by their corporate ma$ter$ who call the $hot$.”

Well, OK. I concede a piece of the truth to this viewpoint — but fear that there is no pure, chaste and financially uncompromised route to the American presidency. Lincoln, the Obama role model, was, after all, something less than an abolitionist when he got elected. He was a man of his time — only slightly off the racist political center of the day — but wound up altering the course of history.

Obama’s trajectory is not on a collision course right now with the entrenched insanity of war. He’s trying to make peace with this insanity and wage the “softer,” PC war that Democrats prefer, building schools as well as blowing them up, going out of his way to say positive things about Muslims, etc.

But he’s still operating on the assumption that a robot war, which kills just as randomly and far more prolifically than suicide bombings in public squares do, can root evil out of its cave and secure U.S. and, while we’re at it, world peace. History is waiting to tell him otherwise.

---
Robert Koehler, an award-winning, Chicago-based journalist, is an editor at Tribune Media Services and nationally syndicated writer. You can respond to this column at bkoehler@tribune.com or visit his Web site at commonwonders.com. © 2009 Tribune Media Services, Inc.

Email this article to a friend

Don't forget to check out articles from 2009 and 2010

National Issues

"McCain could have meant Less War"
December 31, 2009
David Swanson

"Healthcare mandate vs. the Constitution"
December 24, 2009
David Swanson

"A healthy economy"
December 24, 2009
Robert C. Koehler

"Apostle of our inner genius"
December 17, 2009
Robert C. Koehler

"Wars or jobs: decide now"
December 14, 2009
David Swanson

"Are Americans Too Broken for the Truth to Set Us Free?"
December 13, 2009
Bruce E. Levine

"The school-to-prison pipeline"
December 11, 2009
Robert C. Koehler

"Kucinich circulating privileged resolutions to end wars in Afghanistan and Pakistan"
December 10, 2009
David Swanson

"National security state still killing John F Kennedy"
December 7, 2009
Pete Johnson

"Richard Viguerie calls GOP litmus tests "Well intentioned," but urges replacement of Republican establishment leaders"
December 3, 2009
Bob Sturm

"Craziest Obavietghanistan speech moments "
December 2, 2009
David Swanson

"New civil resistance coalition formed to end the war"
December 1, 2009
Cindy Sheehan

"Anti-Americans"
November 24, 2009
Christopher Bifani

"Why can't we do to DC what we did to Seattle? "
November 19, 2009
David Swanson

"They should get a union"
November 17, 2009
David Swanson

"KSM and MSM"
November 17, 2009
David Swanson

"The two percent robustness"
November 15, 2009
David Swanson

"Between hate speech and adoration"
November 15, 2009
David Swanson

"Pelosi arrested us for asking for healthcare"
November 15, 2009
Dan Hodges, Chair, Health Care for All-California

"Over 2,200 veterans died in 2008 due to lack of health insurance "
November 15, 2009
Physicians for a National Health Program

"Isolated incident"
November 15, 2009
Robert C. Koehler

"Come together right now"
November 15, 2009
David Swanson

"Joel Peresman of the Rock Hall Foundation says the time has come today "
November 4, 2009
Harvey Wasserman

"Between hate speech and adoration"
November 2, 2009
David Swanson

"Preview of Ramzy Baroud's 'My Father was a Freedom Fighter'"
October 29, 2009
Stephen Lendman

"Why I am risking arrest for Medicare for all "
October 29, 2009
Margaret Flowers, M.D., Congressional Fellow, Physicians for a National Health Program

"Single-eye vision"
October 29, 2009
Robert C. Koehler

"Did Obama/McCain choice matter?"
October 28, 2009
David Swanson

"No one else will stop the killing -- Veteran's group to members: Multiply resistance by any peaceful means available "
October 27, 2009
Mike Ferner

"Accepting the prize"
October 26, 2009
Robert C. Koehler

"Glen Ford speaks in Columbus"
October 26, 2009
Free Press

"Heavy Traffic"
October 23, 2009
Terence Robertson

"Who SHOULD Decide About War?"
October 14, 2009
By David Swanson

"Starting Another Year of War in Afghanistan"
October 14, 2009
Norman Solomon

"Congress must pass single-payer health care now! "
September 30, 2009
Cynthia McKinney

"U.S. Drug War Priorities in Need of Re-Evaluation"
September 16, 2009
Mary Jane Borden

"Senator Kennedy visits then Cleveland City Councilman"
August 26, 2009
Representative Dennis Kucinich

"Govt-funded reporter urged lynching of Black Congresswoman"
August 24, 2009
David Swanson