Video of the residents of Velikaya Znamenka (southern Ukraine) speak against the war and the conscription of its residents (with English subtitles).
For the last twelve years, NBC’s Brian Williams has been publicly recounting a story about being aboard a U.S. Army helicopter in Iraq. Williams was covering the Iraq War on the first day of the American invasion, traveling with the Army’s 159th Aviation Regiment. According to Williams, his helicopter was struck by an Iraqi RPG forcing it to make a dangerous emergency landing. Williams has told the story in multiple venues, each time relating the harrowing story of what it feels like to come under enemy assault and to fear possible death. The problem with Williams’ story is that it’s not factually correct.
It’s true Williams was aboard an Army helicopter on that first day of the American invasion, just not the one that took RPG fire. After apologizing for misremembering the incident, Williams admitted that while he was part of the four-part unit, one of which took Iraqi fire, his wasn’t the one that took a direct hit. His was behind the one hit. As the story evolves, other Army personnel have said that Williams was in an entirely separate helicopter unit traveling in the other direction. The pilot of Williams’ helicopter has said it did take fire, but only from Iraqi AK-47s. With the details still being sorted out, one thing is clear—Brian Williams is no longer deserving of the public valor heaped upon him for his supposed war heroics.
The problem with labeling Brian Williams, or any other journalist or solider who comes under attack during war a hero, is that it glamorizes war’s senseless violence. War between feuding governments is insidious and deserving only of scorn. Invading forces who are attacked or injured during a war as mad as George W. Bush’s Iraqi excursion are no more deserving of the gallantry attributed to them than the loser of a drunken barroom brawl.
Here in America, unfortunately, we live in a perverted reality tunnel within which this senseless violence must be celebrated at all costs, regardless of your views of the war itself. Bravery, courage, and honor still manage to apply to those foolish enough to volunteer in even the dumbest and bloodiest of wars. Injured soldiers and war correspondents receive parades, medals, and endless public praise, no matter the circumstances that led to their injury.
American war culture is a sickness. By making heroes of those who come under return-attack during an aggressive war, we ignore the incredible destruction they bring about in the process. Ron Paul got into hot water in the wake of Chris Kyle’s death when he tweeted about Kyle that “those who live by the sword die by the sword.” It’s a saying all the more applicable to active duty troops. For one should hardly expect anything less than serious injury or death when he or she ventures out to deliver the same fate to a foreign people.
By celebrating the wartime acts of the individuals involved, even where the war itself is almost wholly lacking in public support, the American public reveal themselves as pawns of the warmongers. Backlash against the warmongers becomes all the more difficult where the warmonger can deflect all criticism as “harmful to the troops”. Let’s face it, there’s nothing inherently good about traveling abroad to kill people for your government. Remove this trump card from the politicians’ pockets and they’ll have a much tougher sell the next time they decide to engage in such global terror.
The leak trial of CIA officer Jeffrey Sterling never got near a smoking gun, but the entire circumstantial case was a smokescreen. Prosecutors were hell-bent on torching the defendant to vindicate Operation Merlin, nine years after a book by James Risen reported that it “may have been one of the most reckless operations in the modern history of the CIA.”
That bestselling book, State of War, seemed to leave an indelible stain on Operation Merlin while soiling the CIA’s image as a reasonably competent outfit. The prosecution of Sterling was a cleansing service for the Central Intelligence Agency, which joined with the Justice Department to depict the author and the whistleblower as scurrilous mud-throwers.
In the courtroom, where journalist Risen was beyond the reach of the law, the CIA’s long-smoldering rage vented at the defendant. Sterling had gone through channels in 2003 to warn Senate Intelligence Committee staffers about Operation Merlin, and he was later indicted for allegedly giving Risen classified information about it. For CIA officials, the prosecution wasn’t only to punish Sterling and frighten potential whistleblowers; it was also about payback, rewriting history and assisting with a PR comeback for the operation as well as the agency.
As retired Gen. and ex-CIA Director David Petraeus was about to speak in New York City last Oct. 30, someone decided to spare the “great man” from impertinent questions, so ex-CIA analyst Ray McGovern was barred, arrested and brought to trial, prompting McGovern to ask some questions now in an open letter.
Dear Gen. David Petraeus,
As I prepare to appear in New York City Criminal Court on Wednesday facing charges of “criminal trespass” and “resisting arrest,” it struck me that we have something in common besides being former Army officers – and the fact that the charges against me resulted from my trying to attend a speech that you were giving, from which I was barred. As I understand it, you, too, may have to defend yourself in Court someday in the future.
You might call me a dreamer, but I’m not the only one who believes there may be some substance to reports last month that Justice Department prosecutors are pressing to indict you for mishandling classified information by giving it to Paula Broadwell, your mistress/biographer.
No doubt, whatever indiscretions were involved there seemed minor at the time, but unauthorized leaks of this sort – to casual acquaintances – were strongly discouraged in the Army in which I served five decades ago. Remember the old saying: “Loose lips sink ships.” There were also rules in the Universal Code of Military Justice for punishing a married soldier who took up with a mistress, an offense for which many a trooper spent time in the brig.
A very angry Senator John McCain denounced CODEPINK activists as "low-life scum" for holding up signs reading "Arrest Kissinger for War Crimes" and dangling handcuffs next to Henry Kissinger’s head during a Senate hearing on January 29. McCain called the demonstration "disgraceful, outrageous and despicable," accused the protesters of "physically intimidating" Kissinger and apologized profusely to his friend for this "deeply troubling incident."
But if Senator McCain was really concerned about physical intimidation, perhaps he should have conjured up the memory of the gentle Chilean singer/songwriter Victor Jara. After Kissinger facilitated the September 11, 1973 coup against Salvador Allende that brought the ruthless Augusto Pinochet to power, Victor Jara and 5,000 others were rounded up in Chile’s National Stadium. Jara’s hands were smashed and his nails torn off; the sadistic guards then ordered him to play his guitar. Jara was later found dumped on the street, his dead body riddled with gunshot wounds and signs of torture.
Despite warnings by senior U.S. officials that thousands of Chileans were being tortured and slaughtered, then Secretary of State Kissinger told Pinochet, “You did a great service to the West in overthrowing Allende.”
Whenever the word "refugee" is uttered, I think of my mother. When Zionist militias began their systematic onslaught and "cleansing" of the Palestinian Arab population of historic Palestine in 1948, she, along with her family, ran away from the once peaceful village of Beit Daras.
Back then, Zarefah was six. Her father died in a refugee camp in a tent provided by the Quakers soon after he had been separated from his land. She collected scrap metal to survive.
My grandmother Mariam, would venture out to the "death zone" that bordered the separated and newly established state of Israel from Gaza’s refugee camps to collect figs and oranges. She faced death every day. Her children were all refugees, living in shatat – the Diaspora.
My mother lived to be 42. Her life was tremendously difficult. She married a refugee, my dad, and together they brought seven refugees into this world – my brothers, my sister and myself. One died as a toddler, for there was no medicine in the refugee camp’s clinic.
