The Killers in US Uniform
A Kadir Jasin

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IN THE Post-Cold War era, the US is the sole surviving superpower. In the absence of an opponent, America is today the world’s “megapower”.

Sadly, its warmongering has created a very unstable and unsafe world for everybody and despite having a friendlier face in the White House, the US still cannot shed its big bully image.

With every bomb that goes off in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan or Israel, the American’s hands get bloodier.

And it’s not proving to be easy for President Barack Obama to wind down the many wars that the evil Bush-Cheney Empire started around the world on the pretext of war on terror and ridding the world of Saddam Hussein’s non-existent weapon of mass destruction.

Lately, even the new Obama Administration is catching the bad habit of the Bush-Cheney Empire of perverting the truth and hiding facts from the generally ignorant American public. This time it’s on the pretext of “bad taste”.

It concerns attempts by the US Defense Secretary, Robert Gates, to halt the publication of a picture showing a US Marine soldier lying dead in Afghanistan last month.

The picture was taken by Associated Press (AP) photographer Julie Jacobson showing Lance Cpl. Joshua "Bernie" Bernard, 21, lying on the ground with severe leg injuries after being struck by a grenade in an ambush on Aug. 14 and fellow Marines tending to him. Bernard later died of his wounds.

Gates, an Obama appointee, had not only accused the news outlets of bad taste for using the AP supplied picture, but had also written a strongly worded letter to the AP President and CEO, Tom Curley, saying it was a matter of "judgment and common decency" not to use the photo.

A Pentagon spokesman said Gates followed up with a phone call "begging" Curley not to use it. But the AP did not succumb to Gates’ censorship attempt.

What bad taste was Gates talking about when hundreds of Iraqi and Afghan civilians are killed everyday by US fire, drones and bombs in pursuant of wars started by the Bush-Cheney Evil Empire?

What bad taste is he talking about when the US court had just found a US Marine soldier, Steven Dale Green, 24, guilty of raping and killing a 14-year old Iraqi girl and murdering her family?

Alas Green and his fellow scum of the earth (borrowing a term from an old movie/comic book about the French Foreign Legion) were spared the death penalty because the good men and women of the jury couldn’t agree on a punishment for their brutal crime.

Why? Because Green and his fellow rapists, murderers and tortures are Americans and are institutional killers – trained, paid and authorised by the Commander-in-Chief to use extreme measures, which in the heat of battle and to the likes of Green and Lynndie England (the infamous Abu Ghraib torturer), include torture, rape and murder.

Murderer Green went on to desecrate the bodied of his Muslim victims by setting them on fire.

These are not the only institutional torturers, rapists and murderers wearing the US badge.
Many more US “mercenary” soldiers were involved in rape, murder and torture of the very people they were send to protect.

Joshua "Bernie" Bernard whatever his name was, was not a helpless Iraqi girl. He was a combatant. Alas, the American war killed more Iraqis than Saddam was accused of and the same gospel is now being spread in Afghanistan.

Obama is destined to fail to bring peace and security to the world like all his predecessors if he denies that the Iraqis, Afghans, Pakistanis and Iranians have as much right as the Americans to determine their own future – Taliban no Taliban, Mullah no Mullah.

America had failed in all the wars it started or participated in since the end of the Second World War with the exception of probably the Korean War. Even so Korea is today divided and dangerously unstable.

On the rare occasions that America showed leadership and morality was when the generals were replaced by statesmen and diplomacy replaced the brute military force.

Will Obama have the courage to say no to the warmongering generals and the military industrial complex, and take that path of peace? I doubt.
Posted by A KADIR JASIN at 11:18 AM 9 comments