"Selective Indignation over bin Laden Video"

[Doug Millison]

What else to expect from a nation founded on genocide of the continent's
native inhabitants and built on the backs of slaves, as Pynchon points out
in M&D?


http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=12137

"[...] Certainly there is little reason to doubt that if someone had
trained a video camera on U.S. clients like Duvalier, Marcos, Somoza,
Pinochet or Suharto, we would have had the chance to be regaled with
dismissive rationalizations of murder from them as well. Inhumanity,
cruelty and barbarity, as it turns out, have never been deal-breakers for
gaining the support of the United States government, after all.

What is of course interesting -- or at least would be to a nation insistent
on something so mundane as consistency -- is how Americans react with
horror to the cold, calculating comments of bin Laden, and yet brush aside
(or better yet, fail to even learn about) the equally cold, calculating
ways in which their elected officials and other U.S. spokespersons have
regularly dispensed with human life, absent so much as a twinge of remorse.

After all, are the things bin Laden said really any more morally
troublesome than the comments of former Secretary of State Madeline
Albright? Remember, it was Albright who explained, also on camera, that
even though roughly half-a-million children in Iraq had died from U.S.
sanctions and bombing, ultimately, this cost was "worth it." [...] when
Poppa Bush was asked whether capturing Manuel Noriega had been worth the
deaths of the thousands of innocent Panamanians killed by U.S. forces in
1989, he responded that while "every human life is precious," ultimately
"yes, it has been worth it." [...]  Like the U.S. soldiers who bombed Iraqi
forces even after they had surrendered on the field of battle in Operation
Desert Storm -- a certifiable war crime -- and laughed about their actions,
calling the strafing "a turkey shoot," and likening it to "shooting fish in
a barrel." As one of America's finest put it: "It's the biggest Fourth of
July show you've ever seen. And to see those tanks just 'boom,' and more
stuff keeps spewing out of them ... it's wonderful."

Or how about Ed Korry, Ambassador to Chile in 1973, when the U.S. sponsored
the overthrow of the democratically-elected government of Salvador Allende,
and replaced it with one of the most brutal dictatorships in the
hemisphere's history? Prior to Allende's victory, Korry was on record as
saying: "Once Allende comes to power we shall do all within our power to
condemn Chile and Chileans to utmost deprivation and poverty."

Or what of former Undersecretary of State, U. Alexis Johnson? In 1971, as
the U.S. seared the Laotian countryside with phosphorous bombs and napalm,
killing tens of thousands of civilians, Johnson described the slaughter as
"something of which we can be proud as Americans." He explained further
that, "what we are getting for our money there is, I think, to use the old
phrase, very cost effective."

Or how about Robert Martens, who served in the U.S. Embassy in Jakarta at
the time of the Indonesian coup that brought Suharto to power in 1965, and
resulted in the mass murder of roughly 500,000 people? In discussing how
the CIA provided the Indonesian military with a list of suspected
subversives to assassinate, Martens noted: "It really was a big help to the
Army. They probably killed a lot of people, and I probably have a lot of
blood on my hands, but that's not all bad. There's a time when you have to
strike hard at a decisive moment." Little doubt that the head of al-Qaeda
would second that emotion.

Then there's Fred Sherwood, a former CIA pilot who was involved in the
U.S.-led coup that overthrew the elected government of Guatemala in 1954.
Later he took up residence in the country and became President of the
American Chamber of Commerce there. In the late 1970's, as the United
States continued its two-decade long support of death squads and military
dictators, Sherwood could think of nothing wrong with their murderous
deeds: "Why should we be worried about the death squads? They're bumping
off the commies, our enemies. I'd give them more power ... The death squad
-- I'm for it ... Shit!"

And last but not least, what should we make of Dan Mitrione? Mitrione was
the former head of the U.S. Office of Public Safety in Uruguay. In that
capacity, Mitrione's job appears to have been instructing Uruguayan police
and military officials on how to torture their political enemies more
effectively. His favorite slogan, according to those with whom he worked,
was "the precise pain, in the precise place, in the precise amount, for the
desired effect." Since torturers need to practice their craft, Mitrione
would instruct his students to kidnap homeless beggars off the streets, so
that he could test out all manner of torture devices on them, including
electric shock to the genitals. Once he was finished with these torture
models, they were routinely murdered.

And yet in 1970, when Mitrione was himself kidnapped and killed by an
Uruguayan rebel group, Secretary of State William Rogers attended his
funeral, as did Frank Sinatra and Jerry Lewis, who staged a benefit for the
family. White House Spokesman Ron Ziegler said of Mitrione, that his
"devoted service to the cause of peaceful progress in an orderly world will
remain as an example to free men everywhere." [...]




....but,