It’s nice that people are angry and upset over those bonuses paid by taxpayer-bailout beneficiary AIG, but what fascinates me is the lack of anger and outrage over the really horrific things the federal government has done for the past 8 years, including the invasion and occupation of Iraq, the out-of-control federal spending, the inflation, the mortgaging of our nation to the communist regime in China, the terrible assaults on civil liberties, kidnapping and rendition, torture and sex abuse of prisoners and detainees, indefinite detentions, illegal wiretapping and monitoring of telephone calls and emails, and nullification of the Bill of Rights in cases involving terrorism.
In other words, for 8 years U.S. officials have been taking our nation down the road to dictatorship, financial ruin, and moral debauchery. Yet, all too many Americans haven’t been angry or upset with any of it. Then, along come some bonuses paid to the AIG people and everyone goes ballistic.
Consider the war of aggression against Iraq. Where is the anger over what the U.S. government has done to the people of that nation? Where are the consciences of people who continue to pride themselves as living in a nation based on Judeo-Christian values?
With the possible exception of Dick Cheney, most everyone agrees that Iraq never attacked the United States. That makes the U.S. government the aggressor power in this conflict. By attacking, invading, and occupying Iraq, the U.S. government has committed what was termed a “war of aggression” at the Nuremberg War Crimes Tribunal.
In the process, the U.S. government, operating through the troops that everyone is expected to support, has killed hundreds of thousands of Iraqi people. Hundreds of thousands! That is a lot of dead people! Some people estimate that the number of dead might even approach one million.
Add to that the untold number of injured and maimed. Add to that the millions who have been exiled from their homes and even the country.
Add to that the hundreds of thousands of Iraqi children who died as a consequence of the brutal sanctions that the U.S. government and the UN (at the behest of the U.S. government) leveled against Iraq, which not surprisingly turned out to be a major factor in the terrorist blowback that took place both in 1993 and 9/11.
Add to that the destruction of the country itself.
That’s a lot of death, suffering, and damage.
Yet, where is the anger or outrage over any of this among the American people?
Instead, the attitude among many is that the Iraq adventure should now be considered a “success” because violence is down, especially after that famous “surge.”
Many years ago, UN Ambassador Madeleine Albright declared to the world that the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Iraqi children from those brutal sanctions had been “worth it.” Echoing that sentiment, the attitude today is that all the death, suffering, exile, and destruction resulting from the invasion and occupation of Iraq should also be considered “worth it” because “democracy” has been brought to Iraq, albeit a bit violently.
And if there is another terrorist attack on American soil, say by that Iraqi guy who threw his shoe at President Bush, everyone will be expected to again toe the official line: It’s not because he’s angry over the killing and suffering brought on by the U.S. government. It’s just that the terrorist hates America for its “freedom and values.”
Now, ask yourself this: What if the invasion and occupation of Iraq had resulted in the deaths of 200,000 American soldiers? What would be the response among Americans?
There can no doubt as to how Americans would react to such a high number of U.S. deaths. Most everyone would be so angry, outraged, and horrified that it is impossible to imagine it, especially since it was the U.S. government that started the war.
So, why is the attitude different with respect to the loss of hundreds of thousands of Iraqi lives? The answer is simple: Iraqi life doesn’t have the same value that American life has. Iraqis are more expendable than Americans, at least in the pursuit of “democracy.”
In fact, in achieving “success” in Iraq, there has never been an upward limit on the number of Iraqis who could be killed as part of the costs of achieving “success.” In the minds of U.S. officials, no price has been too high to pay in terms of Iraqi deaths.
We know this is true because early on, the Pentagon made a conscious decision to not keep track of Iraqi dead. It didn’t matter. Whether the final death count was 10, 30, or 80 percent of the populace, it just didn’t matter. The idea was to simply keep killing until “democracy” was established. Then, it would all be considered a “success” no matter how many Iraqis had died.
The perversity of all this is that while they were killing Iraqis for the sake of bringing “democracy” to Iraq, U.S. officials were, at the same time, ardently and enthusiastically supporting a brutal military general in Pakistan who had taken power in a coup, who was prohibiting elections, who dismantled the nation’`s independent judiciary, and was terrorizing the citizenry, actions that have contributed to the chaos in that country today.
If only just a bit of the anger and outrage that is being directed toward those AIG executives who are enjoying their taxpayer-provided bonuses would have been oriented toward U.S. foreign policy many years ago. If that had happened, Americans today would be living lives of much more freedom, prosperity, and normality. And there would be hundreds of thousands of Iraqis alive rather than dead.