JOHN CHUCKMAN

POSTED RESPONSE TO A COLUMN IN TORONTO’S GLOBE AND MAIL

Ridiculous.

How can any Arabic-speaking person have named his organization “the toilet,” which is what Al Qaeda translates?

This name was created by U. S. intelligence some years ago as a collective term for the various “bad guys” roaming around out there. There is no such organization.

We have the testimony of several very prominent people on that fact, including Britain’s Jack Straw.

Remember the supposed picture of Osama watching television released soon after his murder, a picture which still makes the rounds? That picture was positively identified as a neighboring man, as it should have been since it showed “Osama” using the wrong hand.

These “leaks” are, after all coming from the very people who assassinated bin Laden in cold blood with his family in the house, never mind taking him to The Hague for a fair trial.

The same people who never provided the public or other authorities with one shred of authentic evidence for bin Laden’s guilt of anything but disliking the United States.

The same people who invaded Afghanistan and still occupy it on flimsy excuses.

The same people who invaded Iraq, falsely making assertions about Hussein’s complicity, destroying a prosperous country and starting a terror that would see a million die.

They are the same people sending scores of drones into Pakistan killing hundreds of innocent people with their missiles.

They are the same people who have totally distorted a UN Resolution for a no-fly zone in Libya into an all-out effort to kill Qaddafi and his chief assistants.

This rubbish is just stuff to reinforce public acceptance of the moral filth of war without end, assassinations, and death squads.

JOHN CHUCKMAN

POSTED RESPONSE TO A COLUMN IN INTIFADA REPEATED FROM THE TELEGRAPH

The Archbishop has long been one of the West’s most important moral critics, as one might expect from a genuine Christian leader.

Contrast his tough and honest views with the kind of diplomatic pap we typically get from, say, the Vatican.

Or compare his moral bravery with certain American Christian fundamentalists who sound as though their job was to serve as cheerleaders for the American military-industrial complex.

In books and stories about the past, we invariably praise the kind of character we find in the Archbishop.

But in real life, the establishment and substantial parts of the population have no use for them, because their tough views and moral authority call into question accepted clichés and create inconvenient truths.

Recall the powerful and famous scene in Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov in which Jesus returns to earth to meet the Grand Inquisitor, and the two have a conversation.

Jesus himself recognizes none of his teachings in the words of the Grand Inquisitor, and the Grand Inquisitor grows irritated with someone he regards as a nuisance, finally sending Jesus off to be heard from no more.

That is, sadly, the immortal truth of how power and establishment welcome honesty, decency, and truth: they don’t, ever.

America has descended to the ghastly moral level of Israel in all of its reactions to 9/11: illegal arrests, kidnapping, torture, assassinations, ignoring international laws and treaties, imposing harsh new laws completely out of the spirit of its Constitution, maintaining an international torture gulag, and making deals with monsters like General Dostum.

When you throw away everything of genuine human value in a place like America, all you are left with is a great imperial power ready to crush anyone with whom it disagrees.

https://chuckmanwordsincomments.wordpress.com/2011/05/02/obama-bin-ladens-assassination-nothing-to-celebrate-and-no-justice-at-all-considering-the-facts-this-is-just-one-more-proof-of-might-makes-right/

https://chuckmanwordsincomments.wordpress.com/2011/05/06/more-on-bin-ladens-assassination-the-nonsence-of-al-qaeda-web-sites-making-announcements-the-nonsense-of-al-qaeda-background-on-bin-laden/

JOHN CHUCKMAN

POSTED RESPONSES TO A COLUMN IN TORONTO’S GLOBE AND MAIL

Al-Qaeda said?

You certainly do not have to be a “conspiracy theorist” to look on such a statement with hard cynical eyes.

First, we have the word of former British Foreign Secretary, Jack Straw, as well as other distinguished people that there is no “Al-Qaeda,” the term being a made-up catch-all for “bad guys” in general.

Since the word literally means “toilet,” it has always seemed unlikely there is such an organization even without the testimony of people who know.

Second, we pick these things up off a supposed Al-Qaeda web site?

Please, how long do you think it would take – with the NSA and CIA and other agencies constantly monitoring the Internet – to have special forces breaking down your door if you had a web site designated as an official Al-Qaeda web site?

A day? Maybe hours?

This kind of report lacks journalistic credibility.
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Response to another reader who says:

“So really the threat is still there and all must be vigilant.”

Vigilant for what?

People-eating aliens from space?

The Rapture?

Anti-Christ?

Spores from space?

Asteroids on a collision course with earth?

That is a ridiculous mode of thought which the propagandists and powers that be exploit to the hilt.

People who do murderous things are always part of life, especially in places like the United States.

You don’t have call them terrorists, just criminals or violent mental cases.

And responsible citizens have always reported truly doubtful behaviors to authorities.

Today we have lunatics day and night seeing things that aren’t there.
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Response to another reader who asks:

“Was there ever a Bin Laden?”

Yes.

He was a son of a distinguished and rich Saudi family and he is known to have intensely disliked the ruling House of Saud, and that’s why he could not live in his own homeland.

He served in America’s proxy war against the Soviets in Afghanistan in the 1980s.

He is reputed to have been a brave man and a quite intelligent one.

Being an enemy of the House of Saud was itself a very dark mark against him for the United States after his being used in Afghanistan, but he also grew to dislike the United States.

He disliked the U.S. for manipulating his people over Afghanistan. They fought against the Soviets based on the notion that the Soviets were godless interlopers in Afghanistan, set on suppressing Muslims – that is the kind of line the CIA repeated endlessly while handing out Stinger missiles, rifle grenades, and packages of plastique.

After the Soviet defeat, he saw the U.S. beginning to do the very things they used to inflame hatred of the Soviets in a long series of events which saw Americans encroaching on what he and others regarded as sacred land. American troops in Saudi Arabia, land of the Prophet, and supported by the corrupt House of Saud, were especially detested.

Beyond that, our knowledge is pretty sketchy.

The U.S. never offered proof of his involvement in 9/11.

Indeed, the Taleban government in Afghanistan was willing to extradite him when the U.S. requested it after 9/11, if evidence were supplied, that being the normal international procedure in all extraditions.

It was the U.S. who refused, a fact never explained.

The U.S. made up its mind to invade Afghanistan and teach the world a lesson in the meaning of vengeance.

The odd fact is it was not the Taleban who even invited bin Laden to live in the country, it was the previous Northern Alliance government, the very same people the U.S. used to fight the Taleban, the very people who rule there today, and many of them are just as intolerant and backward as the Taleban.

The Taleban, while backward and nasty in their views, need never have been our actual enemies.

Many responsible people believe bin Laden was killed in the horrific bombing of Tora Bora a decade ago. If such were the case, it is reasonable the U.S. would want to keep it a secret to prevent the creation of a martyr.

I don’t know, but I was somewhat inclined to accept that.

This recent claim of his assassination, even if true, is so full of uncertainties and inconsistencies that great doubts exist as to what actually happened, and I am not referring to pictures or the lack of them.

It is quite possible that the Pakistani government actually gave him up to the CIA in return for some benefit – as perhaps a slowdown or halt to all the drone attacks and special forces assassinations.

There is a credible report from Pakistan that it was the Pakistani military who landed and entered the compound – this would have the effect of handing Obama a prize for his re-election – something which has not been at all certain.

Any government would be tired and angry about such high-handed treatment. But American activity’s impact on fundamentalist areas of Pakistan has been devastating in terms of terror incidents against the government for its silent cooperation. American arrogance has caused Pakistan to pay a high price in instability, literally tens of thousand of deaths.

On the other hand, Obama may just have staged a big show, a setting for announcing what may have been true for ten years.

I don’t see what gruesome pictures would settle since we can be sure there would have been pictures taken ten years ago in the mountains of Tora Bora.

Whatever is the case, I’m sure he is dead, but again we have no idea as to what his responsibility for 9/11 or other acts was. It does seem to me that he provided the United States with something of an Emmanuel Goldstein figure, the mythical arch villain with whom Oceana constantly frightened its citizens in Orwell’s 1984.

JOHN CHUCKMAN

POSTED RESPONSE TO A COLUMN IN TORONTO’S GLOBE AND MAIL

Not much satisfaction in this.

He was killed by a far greater butcher, the one responsible for a million deaths in Iraq, three million in Vietnam, and who knows how many in Afghanistan, Somalia, Cambodia, Pakistan, Chile, and a dozen other places.

Only the pathetic Peace Prize President – who regularly has his drones killing people in Pakistan – takes any real satisfaction because he is looking forward to a difficult election.

Obama’s re-election is hardly something to celebrate, but that is what this unbelievably costly deed concerns.

By the way, there has never been one shred of proof offered of Bin Laden’s guilt of anything except not liking the United States.

The FBI never even put him on its Most Wanted List.

Justice has been done?

I truly believe the predatory United States has no concept of what justice is.

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The excesses reflected in many comments simply prove the impact of propaganda and public gullibility.

Even if he was guilty as charged – and we have never, never been offered proof – his crime is smaller than many crimes of the same American military who killed him.

His crimes, if so they be, also are absolutely no greater than those of Israel, and just in recent years.

Here is a state which killed 400 children in Gaza and another 1,000 adults, about the same number in Southern Lebanon, who knows how many week-in-week-out in raids of various towns, and of course murdered about ten people on the high seas in an act of savage piracy.

There is no justice in any of this. Only more proof, if any were needed, that might makes right.

 

 

JOHN CHUCKMAN

RESPONSES TO AN EDITORIAL IN THE TELEGRAPH

Sorry, but this editorial begs an essential question.

What mission?

The “mission” has never been defined.

And why is that? Because the “mission” cannot be defined.

It is truly preposterous to talk of remaking an ancient society of about 30 million people who mostly live hardscrabble lives in the mountains and deserts.

Afghanistan is only barely a country with traditionally no real central government, no roads, and few of any other modernity.

It is a collection of tribes, many of them living as people lived centuries ago. Even its borders are not fixed, the arbitrary Durand Line serving as an imposed border with Pakistan.

Just consider how long it takes for serious economic development to occur, economic development being the only path to modern democratic society.

Even China – the economic miracle of our age – which had much infrastructure, a cohesive society, and great human capital has taken more than thirty years of growth to arrive where it is.

And great parts of China are still poor and backward, especially in the West.

Or consider how long it takes to change one important human habit, say smoking. Only after decades of effort are we changing this once everyday-accepted habit.

Yet the newspaper editorial rooms, following the well-paid flaks at the Pentagon, speak blithely of immense changes in what is a gigantic country.

The United States never went into Afghanistan to advance its people. If it had wanted that, it could have dropped dollar bills instead of bombs.

What the United States wanted was vengeance, and also, I believe, that football-atmosphere feeling of, “Well, after all we are the greatest, and these poor turban-heads can’t stop us from doing as we please.”

The U.S. garnered UN support in the wake of 9/11 by exploiting sympathy, calling in debts, threats, and promises to get the votes to make the “mission” look international.

Just consider the NATO commitment, apart from Tony Blair’s abused Britain loyally carrying America’s gear. If it were such an important mission, of world significance, then you would not see 750 troops here and 2000 there, many of them under heavy restrictions about fighting. No, you would see the response of WWII. NATO counries cannot say it in public, but they do not believe in America’s “mission.” The size and very nature of their efforts speak eloquently for anyone listening.

It has been a fool’s mission from the beginning, and it remains a fool’s mission.

In the end, the Taleban, who are best described as a large segment of the country and not the phony term “insurgents’ must be part of any government. Karzai recognizes that. So what are you wasting lives and treasure over?

The great irony, of course, is that the Taleban need not have been our enemies. They are not pleasant or modern people, but their views are often no different to those of the Northern Alliance America has effectively put in their place, and the truth is their views are no more backward than those in many third-world countries, including India where savageries like bride-burning continue.

The Taleban did not cause 9/11. Saudis and some others, working abroad, quite possibly in a CIA black operation which backfired, did. They were not even the original ones to grant Osama bin Laden refuge, America’s Northern Alliance did.

And the Taleban still agreed after 9/11 to extradite bin Laden if only a bit of evidence were provided, the normal working procedure for extraditions all over the world. But the United States refused, and, to this day, it is interesting that bin Laden has never been included on the FBI’s Most Wanted List.

For some reason unbelievable resources have been put into defeating what cannot be defeated. The fight against the Taleban has been subsumed under that great and hazy thing called the War on Terror, which really is an absurd extension of Israel’s views of how you live in the Middle East. Insanity, pure and simple.
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So, even accepting your doubtful assumptions, the solution is to attack all of these places?

The war on terror is derived from Israel’s view of living in the Middle East. Israel sits, armed to teeth, with an armed forces and security establishment monstrously out of proportion to its size, and it has attacked every neighbor that it has, some more than once. It threatens every country within a thousand miles that demonstrates any independence of view, and it has used every dirty trick in the book to assault its perceived foes.

Nothing has been a more complete failure than Israel’s way of living with its neighbors.

It is a garrison state, constantly suffering from paranoia, reminding me much of the way people in Virginia in 1700s reacted to the circumstances of slavery, sleeping with guns and knives under their pillows and regularly being driven to excesses by fears of slave revolts.

It is not a model or an ideology to serve as anything of an example.

Indeed, a great deal of the discontent felt in Muslim countries relates to the great suppurating wound of Palestine/Israel, a natural human reaction to the great injustices and to the one-sidedness and injustice of American policy.

Solving a fundamental problem like that would go a great way towards reestablishing healthy relations with the world’s billion Muslims, but still, after decades of talk, we see no honest effort to do so. Instead we spend countless billions fighting phantoms.