Let me say -- or rather, reiterate -- up front
that it is my personal view that the form of vigorous activism known as
non-violence is the only way, or the best way, that we can hope to even
begin to address the inherent and intractable conflicts of human
existence in a genuinely effective profound, sustainable and humane
manner. That is the ideal I strive toward.
Of course, I also recognize that being what I am -- a white man of
Christian heritage living safely and comfortably under the penumbra of
empire -- it is easy for me to espouse this ideal. No drone fired in
the distant black sky is going to kill my children tonight as they
sleep warmly in their beds. No raiding party of assassins is going to
tear down the door of my parents' house tonight and shoot them at the
dinner table. No one with a grudge against me -- or simply in need of
quick cash -- is going to sell me into the captivity of a worldwide
gulag. I'm not going to be caught in the crossfire of marauding
mercenaries on my way to work. I'm not going to wake tomorrow in a
refugee camp, my home and livelihood abandoned in the wake of a
ravaging "counter-terrorism" operation. No foreign soldier is going to
shoot me, or abuse me, or humiliate me, or simply refuse to let me pass
down the street of my own city. I'm not going to be stopped,
"profiled," or regarded with suspicion or hatred simply because of my
skin color or the cultural or religious etymology of my name.
If I lived under the bootheel of such forces, I don't how I would
react, how firmly I could hold to my ideal. I don't know if I would
have the strength of mind and will, or the fortitude and wisdom it
would take to resist our primal pull to violence -- especially if I
grew up in a culture that exalted certain forms of violence as cardinal
virtues. (Of course, as an American, I did grow up in such a
culture -- and so has almost every other human being in history. To
take the non-violent way is to appear -- and yes, often feel -- unnatural, deracinated, alien.)
Nonetheless, despite all these caveats and complexities, the ideal
abides. I decry, denounce and mourn for the use of violence. Each act
of violence -- however understandable it might be in context -- is a
vast, ruinous defeat for our common humanity.
Each such act perpetuates the cycle of violence, the horrific
dynamic of blowback: a self-perpetuating feedback loop that uses itself
to engender more violence, in new and expanding forms. We are living
today in the midst of a particularly virulent form of this dynamic, the
so-called "War on Terror," which I think has been designed -- more or
less deliberately so, although the obscene ignorance and arrogance of
the powerful have also played their fateful part in unwittingly
exacerbating these evils -- to rage on without chronological end,
without geographical, limits, and without any moral, social, legal or
financial restraints. In his book X Films (reviewed here), Alex Cox uses an apt term borrowed from systems analysis -- POSIWID: The Purpose of a System is What It Does.
The Terror War is not an event, or a campaign, or even a crusade; it is a system.
Its purpose is not to eliminate "terrorism" (however this infinitely
elastic term is defined) but to perpetuate itself, to do what it does:
make war. This system can be immensely rewarding, in many different
ways, for those who operate or assist it, whether in government, media,
academia, or business. This too is a self-sustaining dynamic, a
feedback loop that gives money, power and attention to those who serve
the system; this elevated position then allows them to accrue even more
money, power and attention, until in the end -- as we can plainly see
today -- any alternative voices and viewpoints are relegated to the
margins. They are "unserious." They are unimportant. They are not
allowed to penetrate or alter the operations of the system.
These reflections were prompted by last week's attack on the CIA base near
Khost, Afghanistan, and by the reaction to the attack among the
operators and servants of the Terror War system. As the world knows,
seven CIA officers were killed by a suicide bomber. (Two of the dead
were actually Blackwater mercenaries, but as CNN solemnly informs us,
the Agency considers such hired guns to be part of the family.) The
officers were at a "forward operating base" near the Pakistan border.
From this redoubt, they plotted and directed attacks by drone missiles
and, if they were similar to other CIA teams,
which seems likely, also helped run assassination squads, with bombs
and ground raids launched against villages, private homes and other
locations which allegedly contain alleged terrorists, both in
Afghanistan, which American forces are now openly occupying, and in
Pakistan, a sovereign, allied country where American military and
security forces are carrying out a more and more open "secret war."
The officers were killed when a suicide bomber -- apparently a
'native' whom the CIA was grooming as a potential agent -- walked into
a gym and set off his hidden belt of explosives. Again, as noted above,
I decry all deaths by violence, although I direct most of my attention
to the violent deaths caused by the gargantuanly disproportionate
infliction of state terrorism that characterizes our age, as opposed to
the piecemeal pinpricks of small bands of extremists and isolated
individuals -- incidents which themselves often betray strong indications of the fomenting or facilitating hand of various operators in the Terror War system.
So it gave me no pleasure to note the grim truth that was confirmed, yet again, by the attack at Khost: Those who live by dirty war, die by dirty war. The CIA-mercenary squad at the base was a key part of what the New York Times rightly describes
as the CIA's evolution into a "paramilitary organization." Like all
terrorists, they operate outside the law, claiming moral superiority as
their justification. And for this particular band, what they have dealt
out to others -- sudden death in a surprise attack with no possibility
of defense -- they have now been dealt in turn.
Of course, the NYT seems to find no moral problem with the United
States of America operating "paramilitary" squads of spies and
mercenaries carrying out "extrajudicial assassinations" -- or
"murders," as they once would have been called -- in foreign lands
occupied by American military forces slaughtering civilians on a
regular basis. (We noted one such slaughter in Afghanistan last week; now yet another one is being reported.)
The story which carried this description is concerned largely with
describing the struggle of these noble bands as they struggle manfully
on distant borders to keep us safe.
In this, the tone of the story strongly echoes the genuinely sick-making words of Barack Obama after the incident. From CNN:
"These brave Americans were part of a long line of patriots who have made great sacrifices for their fellow citizens, and for our way of life," U.S. President Barack Obama said in a written statement Thursday.
"The United States would not be able to maintain the freedom and security that we cherish without decades of service from the dedicated men and women of the CIA."
The CIA's decades-long record of sickening crime, outright atrocity,
constitutional subversion, bungling, near-unbelievable incompetence,
and unrelenting exacerbation of hatred for and violence toward the
United States is indisputable. (For just one egregious example, see "The Secret Sharers.")
Few government organizations in world history have been so inimical to
the national interests of the state they purport to serve. It was with
very good reason that John F. Kennedy -- to whom Obama's sycophants
often liken their hero -- once declared his intention to "splinter the
CIA into a thousand pieces and scatter it to the winds." (Nor can it be
entirely coincidental that Kennedy was later murdered in a case that had innumerable ties to the security apparat.) (Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
There is nothing further from the truth -- nothing further from the
established historical record -- than Obama's statement that the CIA
has been absolutely indispensable in "maintaining the freedom and
security" of the United States. On the contrary; the historical record
clearly shows that the activities of the CIA have, time and again,
reduced both the freedom and security of the people of the United
States.
Yet here we have Obama, once again, groveling to this renegade,
retrograde, criminal organization -- much as he did early on in his
presidency, when he cravenly guaranteed the Agency's thuggish torturers that
they need never fear prosecution from his administration for the
KGB-like, Stasi-like, Gestapo-like atrocities they had inflicted on
their victims.
