[A-List] Some wisdom from Charley Reese

[Bill Totten <shimogamo@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Here are a few short essays by Charley Reese that I believe apply nearly
as much to Japan as to the United States.  Bill Totten


War Propaganda (by Charley Reese)

King Features Syndicate (May 05 2004)

If you step back a moment and think about it, you will realize that you
are constantly being propagandized to approve of war - not just the wars
in Afghanistan and Iraq, but war generically.

We should resist. War is killing, maiming and disfiguring human beings.
It is so disgusting and horrible in reality that even the most
"realistic" Hollywood movie sanitizes it. The news media sanitize it.
The government sanitizes war because it doesn't want you to see the
coffins. Most of all, it doesn't want you to see the bodies before they
are put in the coffins. The Bush administration's real beef with the
Arab television station Al-Jazeera is really nothing more than the fact
that Al-Jazeera shows the bodies.

No, the Bush administration doesn't want you to see the bodies - not the
bodies of our men and women, and not the bodies of Iraqi men, women and
children. The administration wants you to see the war as an electronic
game with bright lights in the distance and good sound effects, or
close-ups of our brave warriors firing their guns at an invisible enemy.
It doesn't want you to see the torn flesh, blood, intestines, feces,
urine. If you did, you might not support the war, and billions of
dollars depend on your support.

The government line is that if you don't approve of the war, you are
disloyal. If you don't agree to give the Pentagon whatever it says it
wants, you are disloyal. If you don't agree to surrender your civil
liberties to the Patriot Act, you are disloyal. If you disagree with the
Bush administration, you are disloyal. If you disagree with the
chicken-hawk demagogues on radio and television, blathering about the
war from the safety of their studios, you are disloyal.

This entire glorification of war - as if the whole and only purpose of
the government and the country were to fight wars - smells of fascism.
The news media glorify the war and militarism; we get the same dose on
television, in the movies and in video games. If the American people
aren't careful, they will wake up one day to find out they've become a
nation of mindless heel-clickers.

America should not be about war. War is justified only in self-defense.
We've been involved in many wars, but the last war fought in
self-defense was World War II. That was also the last war that was
constitutional, with a formal declaration of war by Congress. Not one
single poor soul of the more than 100,000 Americans who have died in the
Cold War and the hot wars since 1945 has died in defense of America.

The sad thing is that when the last soldier leaves Afghanistan and Iraq
- if that day ever comes - we won't be any better off. Afghanistan will
still be Afghanistan. Iraq will still be Iraq. There will be more graves,
there will be more Americans without arms and legs, but nothing will
have changed. Politicians will be searching diligently for more "bad
guys" for the next generation to fight. First it was the fascists, then
the communists, now the terrorists. Who's next? God only knows.

We should not equate peace with weakness. We ought to be like the Swiss.
Their policy is armed neutrality. They have a sound defensive force and
can be in the field in 48 hours, but they will fight only if they are
invaded. They do not send their sons to foreign countries to die for
political or economic reasons.

We should emulate the Swiss. No American should ever kill or die except
in defense of this country. And no corporation should be allowed to make
a profit off the blood of American soldiers, as is now happening in Iraq
and has happened in every war.

An old Marine general had it right when he said, "War is a racket".  Let
us all learn to hate it as it deserves to be hated.

http://reese.king-online.com/Reese_20040505/index.php

Copyright 2004 by King Features Syndicate, Inc.



Lots of Mistakes (by Charley Reese)

King Features Syndicate (2004-05-03)

President George W Bush has said he hasn't made any mistakes. I can
think of lots of mistakes he's made.

He failed to prevent the attacks on September 11. Say what you will,
those attacks occurred on his watch and are his responsibility. The
August 6 memo the CIA prepared for him would have told an alert man to
at least get the Federal Aviation Administration to beef up security at
the airports. He did nothing. On August 7, when he talked to the press,
he didn't mention al-Qaida. He talked only about Saddam Hussein. He came
into office obsessed with the idea of removing Saddam Hussein, and this
obsession blinded him to the real dangers that faced the country.

He took the country to war on false pretenses. There were no weapons of
mass destruction. There was no nuclear program. There were no ties to
al-Qaida. Saddam Hussein was not a threat to anybody but his own people.

Bush has been the most secretive and deceptive president in modern
history. Even before the war in Afghanistan was over, he ordered the
secretary of defense to prepare a war plan against Iraq and to keep it
secret. They used money designated for one war to prepare for another, a
violation of the Constitution.

He alienated our most important allies - France, Germany and Russia -
and had to put together a comic coalition of the bribed and the
browbeaten. Yeah, Honduras is a big help in a war - almost as much as El
Salvador. Consequently, American taxpayers are bearing 95 percent of the
cost and more than 90 percent of the casualties. And there is no exit
strategy.

He disregarded plentiful warnings from experts that invading Iraq would
weaken the war against al-Qaida and actually help the terrorists. He
disregarded warnings that the occupation would be difficult and costly.
Every single warning has been proven to be true, and every single
assumption Bush made has been wrong.

He fired a retired general who had experience in Iraq and replaced him
with a Washington policy wonk, L Paul Bremer, who has made blunder after
blunder. Bremer fired the civil servants and had no one to run the
government. He fired the police and army and had no one to provide
security. Now, a year later, he's trying to hire Saddam's people while
eating crow.

Bush disregarded the advice of the Army chief of staff and went into
Iraq with too few soldiers to do a proper occupation. The orgy of
looting while our soldiers and Marines stood by and watched is probably
the single biggest blunder of the occupation. Not only did the looting
prevent the restoration of services in a timely fashion, it sent a clear
message to the Iraqi people that we didn't give a toot about their
welfare. The only building we protected was the oil ministry.

The two greatest failures of intelligence since Pearl Harbor occurred on
his watch - the September 11 attacks and the mythical weapons of mass
destruction. Yet Bush has not fired one person. He fought against the
9/11 Commission and then stonewalled it. Like somebody on dope, he keeps
insisting his intelligence was "good". I've never seen a president as
disconnected from reality as George W Bush.

His blind support of Israel's Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has made
America the most hated nation on Earth in the Middle East.

There is something seriously wrong with a man who denies any economic
problems, any budget problems, any problems in intelligence and any
problems in Iraq and insists he has made no mistakes. One has to wonder
if he isn't living in his own private world.

http://reese.king-online.com/Reese_20040503/index.php

Copyright 2004 by King Features Syndicate, Inc.



The Bloody Cost (by Charley Reese)

King Features Syndicate (April 30 2004)


Here's another bit of evidence that when the United States condones the
bloody ways of Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, Americans pay for it
with their blood.

I never saw this reported in the mainstream media, but libertarian
Justin Raimondo quotes a group that claims credit for the murder and
mutilation of four American mercenaries in Fallujah.

"This is a gift from the people of Fallujah to the people of Palestine
and the family of Sheikh Ahmed Yassin who was assassinated by the
criminal Zionists", said the statement from the Brigades of Martyr Ahmed
Yassin. "We advise the US forces to withdraw from Iraq and we advise the
families of the American soldiers and the contractors not to come to
Iraq".

The United States cannot stop Sharon from assassinating people. When
President Bush demanded that Sharon withdraw his military forces from
the West Bank, Sharon showed Bush the utmost contempt by ignoring him.
However, the United States could join the rest of the world in
condemning assassinations. But Bush does not have the guts to do it. He
swallowed Sharon's calculated insult and, publicly humiliated, smiled
like a little boy.

A real man would have called Sharon and said: "Look, Mister, you've got
24 hours to pull those troops out of the occupied areas. If you don't,
I'm cutting off all US aid to Israel immediately, and I will instruct
the ambassador to the United Nations to inform other members of the
Security Council that the United States will no longer veto any
resolutions directed against Israel. Furthermore, if you think your
Israeli lobby can change my mind, call the lobbyists up and ask them how
they will feel if the president of the United States goes on national
television and raises the subject of dual loyalty. You seemed to be
confused as to who the dog is and who the tail is. Well, I'm here to
tell you that I'm the dog and you're the tail, and you're damned close
to getting chopped off."

Alas, there is no man in the White House.

Americans ought to hang their heads in shame that every candidate for
national office feels obliged to pay public obeisance to and pledge
undying support for a foreign country about the size of New Jersey. It's
time Americans started asking these bozos: "Just what office are you
running for: president of the United States or deputy prime minister of
Israel? And whose interests do you put first - those of the United
States or those of Israel?"

It ought to be a source of shame that Congress hands Israel a gift of $3
billion every year when there is neither a state nor a municipality in
this country that isn't hurting for revenue. Israel has a high standard
of living. It has more F-16s than any country in the world except the
United States. It has modern tanks and nuclear weapons. In short, it
does not need the coerced charity of the American taxpayers.

Everything I've said about Israel would apply to any other foreign
country. The point is, the United States should not allow any foreign
country to exert undue influence on its internal affairs and on its
policies. If the Japanese, the French or the Germans tried to influence
American elections the way the Israeli lobby does, Americans would be
outraged. Well, the principle applies to everyone.

Those Americans who say to politicians "My vote depends on your support
for Israel" ought to stop and examine their conscience. Which country
are they a citizen of?  Which country commands their loyalty?

As for President Bush, he should realize that every time he condones
Sharon's crimes, some young Americans will pay for it with their lives.
It is because of Bush's blind support for Sharon, a right-wing extremist
with blood on his hands, that hatred for America grows in the Arab world.
We don't need that. We should cut the apron strings and let Israel fend
for itself.

http://reese.king-online.com/Reese_20040430/index.php

Copyright 2004 by King Features Syndicate, Inc.


For more timely wisdom from Charley Reese, please see:

"The Basic Flaw", King Features Syndicate (April 26 2004)
http://www.lewrockwell.com/reese/reese66.html

"Peace Possible", king-online.com (April 24 2004)
http://reese.king-online.com/Reese_20040428/index.php

"Bush Blows It Again", Antiwar.com (April 19 2004)
http://www.antiwar.com/reese/?articleid=2329

"Press and Military", King Features Syndicate (April 21 2004)
http://www.lewrockwell.com/reese/reese64.html