or Powell's or me• • •
"Mike and Jon, Jon and Mike—I've known them both for years, and, clearly, one of them is very funny. As for the other: truly one of the great hangers-on of our time."—Steve Bodow, head writer, The Daily Show
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"Who can really judge what's funny? If humor is a subjective medium, then can there be something that is really and truly hilarious? Me. This book."—Daniel Handler, author, Adverbs, and personal representative of Lemony Snicket
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"The good news: I thought Our Kampf was consistently hilarious. The bad news: I’m the guy who wrote Monkeybone."—Sam Hamm, screenwriter, Batman, Batman Returns, and Homecoming
October 08, 2006
It's Not The Killing Americans Part That's Important
There's a pretty good story in the New York Times today about Luis Posada Carriles. Posada helped plan the bombing of Cubana Airlines Flight 455 in 1976, killing all 73 people aboard. Posada snuck into the U.S. last year, and the Bush administration is trying to find to find some nice country for him to go to while trying very hard to make sure he's never prosecuted for, you know, terrorism. Lots of people are mad about this:
Roseanne Nenninger Persaud, whose 19-year-old brother, Raymond, was one of the passengers who perished, recently wrote a letter to Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales urging him to brand Mr. Posada a terrorist."It feels like a double standard," Ms. Nenninger, who was born in Guyana but has since become an American citizen, said in a telephone interview from New York. "He should be treated like bin Laden. If this were a plane full of Americans, it would have been a different story...
But that's where Ms. Nenniger is completely wrong. If he did it right, Posada probably could have killed 73 Americans with about the same reaction.
It's not that the U.S. government wants us dead. You can't even say, exactly, that they're indifferent. Rather, it's that if you made a list of their top 100 priorities, whether we live or die would be about #96.
So if Posada had blown up a plane with 73 Americans aboard, and it played into one of the U.S. government's higher priorities, then there would be such loud weeping and wailing the heavens would shake. The president would lay a wreath at the grave of each and every one, the New York Times would publish op-eds from relatives demanding JUSTICE. Etc.
By contrast, if Posada had blown up a plane with 73 Americans aboard, but it couldn't be used to advance one of the U.S. government's higher priorities...and particularly if it actually conflicted with one of the government's higher priorities...it wouldn't be a problem. There would be no wreath-laying, no NY Times op-eds. In fact, by now it would be just as forgotten by most Americans as the actual Cubana Flight 455.
Think I'm kidding? Well, foreigners are already welcome to run over Americans with U.S.-made bulldozers.
They're also welcome to torture and murder Harvard graduates.
And it's no problem if they want to kill Americans on the streets of Washington, D.C.
The only thing that matters is whether you kill Americans in a way that provides a pretext for other things the government wants to do. If so, then it's THE GREATEST CRIME EVER COMMITTED. But otherwise, from the U.S. government's perspective, killing Americans is A-OK.
Posted at October 8, 2006 05:12 PM | TrackBack
Excellent post. Neither would the government shrink from staging terror attacks on its own subjects, if it thought that doing so would help accomplish a "higher" purpose: see "Operation Northwoods" approved by the Joint Chiefs of Staff in 1962 but fortunately never carried out.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Northwoods
Sadly, that's true. Party first...always.
Posted by: SPIIDERWEB™ at October 8, 2006 06:52 PMWhat does it matter that he's a Harvard graduate?
Posted by: at October 8, 2006 06:54 PMWhat does it matter that he's a Harvard graduate?
That even that doesn't protect you.
Posted by: Jonathan Schwarz at October 8, 2006 07:04 PMMaybe if he'd had an MBA...
Posted by: Aunt Deb at October 8, 2006 07:32 PMYou're just an Ivy League elitist!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Posted by: at October 8, 2006 09:15 PMMerck knowingly killed tens of thousands of Americans by keeping data re: Vioxx secret. The gov't's reaction? "Adverse reactions? Isn't that kind of like global warming?" The press' reaction? "Holy shit ... Brad and Jennifer are splitsville!"
Posted by: Lloyd at October 8, 2006 10:45 PMJonathan, sometimes my cynicism is so confirmed by reading your stuff.
Posted by: Darryl Pearce at October 8, 2006 11:14 PMJonathan, you have an uncanny ability to look at a set of events and pick out what is really important which is a very rare talent.
The story of Rachel Corrie is a real heartbreaker. I suppose the reaction of the Israeli government was predictable when they concluded Rachel Corrie should not have been there but then one could say the same about the Israeli soldier who was driving the bulldozer.
In the ranger against war website he says,
"Defining terrorism as warfare implies that terrorism is boundless violence. Warfare may seem to equate to extreme violence; however, warfare is not limitless and unreasoned violence. It has restrictions and limits. The military has the laws of land warfare, the Geneva Conventions, Hague Convention, et al. The military does not target civilian, religious, humanitarian, or diplomatic targets, both military and civilian, with impunity and does not accept the rules of warfare. Warfare, unlike terrorism, is not unbridled violence."
This may be true but it is not what always occurs. At the onset of WWII, for example, submarines using torpedoes to sink nonmilitary ships such as freighters and tankers were required to warn these targets that they would be sunk however this was abandoned quite early in the war and both allied and axis submarines sank civilian ships with impunity. It is astonishing that we look at war and come up with these rules on proper war etiquette as if the whole enterprise were not complete madness to begin with.
To me this is the ultimate in what I like to call compartmentalized thinking and the stench of wholesale slaughter hangs like a pall of darkness over the history of humanity and these justifications we invent just cannot stand the light of day.
For many years now people have been trying to define the difference between our animal cousins and ourselves. One was humans use tools however it was discovered that animals use tools including birds, ants and that nemesis of the Christian right the chimpanzees. Then it was people use language and animals do not but then it was discovered dolphins use a language of sorts. Perhaps the real difference between animals and humans is our capacity for hypocrisy.
Jonathan,
Mainstream media sources say you're way off base here. Wikpedia is hardly a credible source for news. I saw it on Fox, so it must be true. Those people you mentioned are the REAL terrorists.
Rachel should not have placed herself under the wheels of a Killdozer. Charles should not have placed himself in the company of Commie Rats. Ronni should not have not have placed herself in a car that was about to be bombed.
That's proper thinking the New American Way according to your new religious right, Fox-controlled, Constitution-free government! I'm glad I moved to Canada, because you Yanks have become much too crazy! And not in a good way, either!
Posted by: JLaR at October 9, 2006 07:02 AMDon't forget that American nuns were free game in El Salvador (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maura_Clarke) and Nicaragua (http://www.brianwillson.com/awolnicelection.html). The 1967 attack on the USS Liberty by Israel (http://home.cfl.rr.com/gidusko/liberty//) also fits the category.
Posted by: Bob at October 9, 2006 08:02 AMWhen you consider that Dubya is the spawn of the former head of the CIA, then you could figure that a "War On Terror" was going to be more of a war with terror. Didn't Dubya torture frogs when he was a kid?
Posted by: Bob In Pacifica at October 9, 2006 08:11 AMThe speech bubble coming out of W's mouth should really say "Feel like killing Americans? BRING THEM ON!"
Posted by: at October 9, 2006 07:33 PMThis should be a huge story, but at least the Post and Times covered it well. The Bush Ad. knew it couldn't just release Posada Carriles - that might have gottten on the evening news - but it also can't put him on trial. He knows waaay too much about US sponsored "sabotage" and violence. It doesn't help that Bushes papa was head of CIA in 1976, when the plane came down (with our advance notice). I find it amazing that someone DOJ is even calling a "terrorist mastermind" was not certified as a terrorist to be held to account. What did Bush say those that harbor a terrorist?
Nice blog, check out mine (mostly on Latin America) aviewtothesouth.blogspot.com
Posted by: leftside at October 11, 2006 01:13 AM
