John Chuckman

COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE IN THE NATIONAL POST AND PROMPTLY REMOVED

This man’s words are pathetically ignorant special pleading and, in publishing them, the National Post shows how far it will go to stir up the right-wing against the proper working of justice. The comments generated by the article, the ones left posted, resemble an orgy of right-wing hate-masturbation.

You go to war, sometimes you get wounded. You don’t whine and snivel about it long afterward, even more so when you were a paid professional killer in America’s special services, as this man was.

The man was a Green Beret, the guys who made their wonderful reputation crawling around at night in the jungles of Vietnam to sneak into villages and cut civilian officials’ throats. They were part of the CIA’s Project Phoenix which included perhaps 40,000 such brave and honorable acts.

But here he is, whining about a 15-year old who was caught up in the bloody mess of war, as though he were a criminal.

Omar Khadr is not a criminal, full stop.

Otherwise every soldier and volunteer who ever went to a foreign war is a criminal, and there are hundreds of thousands of them, including many who ran off to Israel’s various wars to help the IDF kill Arabs.

But they are not treated as criminals by the law.

It has never been the practice, after a war is over, for the winners to try the losers as criminals, unless flagrant war crimes were involved, and even then, it generally has not been the practice.

The United States has itself behaved as a massive war criminal in Western Asia. War after war. Threat after threat. Killing after killing. Massacres. Assassinations. And plenty of torture. The “laws” of war were broken countless times by the United States, and then it had the arrogance to try others for war crimes after torturing them for confessions, including a child, no less.

Only recently, it has been confirmed that a million souls perished in America’s totally illegal invasion of Iraq. Criminal acts do not come a great deal larger than that, but no one received years of confinement and torture for being part of them, much less planning and authorizing them.

This young man was fifteen when American soldiers shot him – twice in the back, a little detail often left out in the telling of the story.

Then they shipped him off for years of torture and isolation in Guantanamo, denying him for a long time all Red Cross-guaranteed rights. His interrogator was a Nazi-like American who made this kid sit up – pulling at his serious and unhealed wounds each time he brutally questioned him, and that after sleep-deprivation.

After years of abuse and without a hope of improving his situation, Khadr finally gave his torturers what they wanted and confessed to killing an American. I am virtually certain he did not kill anyone, but even if he did, he was a mere child and in a war the United States launched. The U.S. in its abuse of him has violated countless laws, including violating the UN Treaty on Child Soldiers, the Geneva Conventions on Prisoners of War, and Red Cross International Conventions on the Rights of Prisoners.

If you want a world governed by law, then you yourself must live by the law. Otherwise, we have international anarchy where might makes right and where America feels free to tell everyone, everywhere what they can and can’t do and even decide who may live and who may die.

And this man who is whining about Khadr’s finally receiving bail was himself nothing less than part of America’s bloody enforcement mechanism.

Thank God for a Canadian judge with some courage and proper legal values. A lot of the most beloved qualities of our Canada have suffered under the hateful government of Stephen Harper, but every once in a while it’s nice to see the old values shine through the gloom.

JOHN CHUCKMAN

 

POSTED RESPONSE TO COLUMN BY OLIVER STONE IN THE GUARDIAN

I agree completely with the general direction of your sentiments, Mr. Stone, but I think you have, and always have had, far too simplistic an idea of John Kennedy.

He was a ferocious Cold Warrior, a martinet in military matters.

Good Lord, he started the American thug-assassin organization, the Green Berets.

They would, of course, go on to cut the throats of 20,000 civilians in Project Phoenix in Vietnam with creepy night attacks against people like village chiefs, a disgrace far greater than Guantanamo.

Kennedy also was deeply involved in trying to assassinate Castro.

Kennedy kept company with, and took benefits from, some terrible underworld types in America.

He was, both in matters involving the Cold War and in matters involving the American Mafia, a man who consistently played at both ends.

His legacy is actually a blur, as are his ethics. We have no idea of what he really was, what he really stood for, and much the same with his brother, Robert.

The Kennedys did not like Lyndon Johnson and his godfather, Edgar Hoover, but they kept Hoover on and enjoyed the filth he delivered on political opponents.

Lyndon Johnson was so crooked in politics, it is impossible to view him clearly. Vote fraud put him into office again and again in Texas.

And the Kennedys, so far as we know, were happy to take his help in 1960. Vote fraud in Texas and Illinois put Kennedy into office. I don’t know about you, but I believe we never get good things out of evil starts.

I know the Kennedy mantra you keep, the bright, brave young man who tried to keep America from the insane human waste of Vietnam.

But we have no clear evidence for that view. He launched the Bay of Pigs. He kept – Robert in charge – making attempts on Castro’s life. He came close to starting a nuclear war in Cuba.

He was a truly dangerous risk-taker, just as when he’d have prostitutes over to the White House swimming pool when Jackie was away.

And, if anything, his brother Robert was even worse.

Obama is from another world altogether. First, he is a genuine intellectual, something not true of either of the Kennedys, although they showed public respect for intellectuals not seen since.

Second, he is a genuinely warm and loving family man, something not true of either of the Kennedys. Robert drove his wife into alcoholism, and John used Jackie as little more than a photo-op prop.

Third, he doesn’t come from a wealthy, “connected” family, the Kennedy’s father having had a long association with the Mafia.

Fourth, he genuinely embodies a world view, being the product of a complex multi-cultural background.

The Kennedys, all of them, were a clan with all the narrowness and intolerance that word implies.

I much prefer comparisons with Franklin Roosevelt, although clearly even in this case there are greatly different backgrounds and influences.

Obama is something genuinely new and bright and genuinely attractive. It will be exciting to watch him try making America at least a little bit better place, which I cynically believe is the very best that can be hoped for.

Finally, anyone who knows some real American history knows that “W” was not a new phenomenon in American politics, just the most incompetent one in memory.

And remember he had Dick Cheney always there, a viciously competent man, who assumed powers as surely as any fascist dictator. And there are lots of Dick Cheneys out there.

God, a recent poll said over 70% of Republicans would support the ignorant, uninformed, ridiculous Sarah Palin as candidate in 2012.

They know a “Cheney” would be there waiting to quietly guide that pathetic lump, a woman the Secret Service has formally accused of creating a big spike in threats against Obama’s life with her trashy mouth.

It will be a miracle if Obama can generate any meaningful change, but then his election itself was something of a miracle.

You know, you really cannot have both an empire and a beacon of liberty. It is impossible.

And you really cannot have a nation whose greed at consuming knows no limits and a world of some fairness and decency. That is an oxymoronic idea.

I really think the prospects for meaningful change are a bit bleak. America in the past has always learned by first beating its head against walls until the pain is just too great to stand.

I think it is very difficult to come up with counter-examples of the American learning process. After all, we only got Obama after enduring eight years of insanity. And the insanity is still there, bubbling just under the surface.

Remember William Shirer’s dark utterance: “Perhaps America will one day go fascist democratically.”

 

NOTE ADDED AT A LATER DATE: What a complete failure Obama has proved, and worst of all, a mass killer loyally serving CIA and Pentagon interests. It is interesting, though, to read of the kind of hopes he once raised. Maybe, just maybe, no one can be elected who can oppose these interests.