[Marxism] Tomgram: Noam Chomsky, Unexceptional Americans

[Dennis Brasky <dmozart1756@xxxxxxxxx>]

>
>
>
> May 19, 2009
> Tomgram: Noam Chomsky, Unexceptional 
> Americans<http://e2ma.net/go/2021010765/1849274/68915384/goto:http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175073/noam_chomsky_unexceptional_americans>
>
> Murder, torture, abuse and photos of the same. We've 
> seen<http://e2ma.net/go/2021010765/1849274/68915385/goto:http://www.antiwar.com/news/?articleid=8560>some
>  of them, of course. Now, evidently
> under 
> pressure<http://e2ma.net/go/2021010765/1849274/68915386/goto:http://news.antiwar.com/2009/05/13/generals-pressed-obama-to-block-photo-%20release/>from
>  his top generals, President Obama has decided to fight
> the 
> release<http://e2ma.net/go/2021010765/1849274/68915387/goto:http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/05/13/AR2009051301751_pf.html>of
>  other grim photos from the dark side of the Bush years of offshore
> injustice -- on the grounds that their publication might inflame opinion in
> the Middle East and our various war zones (as if fighting to suppress their
> publication won't). In this way, just as the president is in the process of
> making Bush's wars his own, so he seems to be making much of the nightmare
> legacy of those years of crime, torture, and cover-up his, too.
>
> The photos his Justice Department will fight to suppress (for how long or
> how successfully we don't yet know) are now officially "his"; next,
> assumedly, come those military commissions, suspended as Obama took office,
> which are evidently about to be 
> reborn<http://e2ma.net/go/2021010765/1849274/68915388/goto:http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5gxy556BRGHjpxwA2iLBQ8y6abh9g>as
>  Obama era tools of injustice. (This brings to mind, in grimmer form, the
> old saw about how military justice is to justice as military music is to
> music.) And with those commissions comes that wonderfully un-Constitutional
> idea of 
> detaining<http://e2ma.net/go/2021010765/1849274/68915389/goto:http://news.antiwar.com/2009/05/14/obama-mulls-indefinite-detention-without-trial-for-detainees/>chosen
>  prisoners indefinitely either entirely without
> trial<http://e2ma.net/go/2021010765/1849274/68915390/goto:http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124223286506515765.html>or
>  with trials that will be mockeries. And with that, evidently, goes the
> idea of possibly setting up some sort of new "national security 
> court"<http://e2ma.net/go/2021010765/1849274/68915393/goto:http://blogs.wsj.com/law/2008/04/09/what-to-do-with-gitmo-detainees-profs-propose-national-security-court/>to
>  try some detainees. (Keep in mind that the Obama administration is
> already hanging on 
> tightly<http://e2ma.net/go/2021010765/1849274/68915395/goto:http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2009/05/13/cheney/>to
>  Dick Cheney's "state secrets" privilege to block various lawsuits by
> those wronged in all sorts of ways in the Bush years.)
>
> In other words, if you can't go to court and get the punishments you want,
> the solution is simply to create courts jiggered in such a way (and
> surrounded by enough secrecy) that you'll get the decisions you desire. If
> that isn't a striking definition of American justice, I don't know what is.
>
> Obama's national security world is now coming into view -- and it's not a
> pretty picture, but then, as Noam Chomsky points out, in a tour de force
> piece below, it hasn't been a pretty picture for a long, long time. *Tom*
>
> Why We Can't See the Trees *or* the Forest
> *The Torture Memos and Historical Amnesia*
> By Noam Chomsky
>
> The torture memos released by the White House elicited shock, indignation,
> and surprise. The shock and indignation are understandable. The surprise,
> less so.
>
> For one thing, even without inquiry, it was reasonable to suppose that
> Guantanamo was a torture chamber. Why else send prisoners where they would
> be beyond the reach of the law -- a place, incidentally, that Washington is
> using in violation of a treaty forced on Cuba at the point of a gun?
> Security reasons were, of course, alleged, but they remain hard to take
> seriously. The same expectations held for the Bush administration's "black
> sites,"<http://e2ma.net/go/2021010765/1849274/68915396/goto:http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2007/08/13/070813fa_fact_mayer>or
>  secret prisons, and for extraordinary
> rendition<http://e2ma.net/go/2021010765/1849274/68915397/goto:http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/7789/the_cia_s_la_dolce_vita_war_on_terror>,
> and they were fulfilled.
> full article --
>
> <
> http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175073/noam_chomsky_unexceptional_americans
> >
>
>
> "It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong."- *Voltaire*
>
>
>
>
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