"We have killed at least 30,000 and possibly 300,000 children. [...] not one of these people have harmed or attacked Britain."
Video of press conference announcing a Scotland Yard investigation of Tony Blair breaking international war laws.
Personally I find it pretty interesting that you need to have a law telling people that invading other countries and killing innocent people is a bad idea.
14 comments:
Personally I find it pretty interesting that you need to have a law telling people that invading other countries and killing innocent people is a bad idea.
Really?! You must not know anything about human nature - or history.
It's hardly human nature. That is, there's more to us than irrationally violent urges that result in the slaughter of innocents. When one mentions human nature they need to take the whole of our nature into account and there is much good within the heart of man, but the bad parts get a lot more fanfare. (The 24 hour news networks, for instance, seem bent on selling conflict and fear to the masses.)
Another issue is that the idea has been propagated that those with common sense and virtue are unable to get anything done in this world, that the wicked mean-spirited folk who intend ill for us all are somehow ordained to succeed. This ridiculous notion prevents positive action from being taken in situations where we cannot afford to sit idle.
The problem is not that such men exist which justify these laws, it's that the law is not often enacted before things have gone too far. (If it is ever enforced at all, such as in the case of George Bush.)
And yet even those men are not thoroughly corrupt. Their insanities stem from a place of hurt and fear. Man is rarely driven to harm his fellow human beings except when he has become convinced that the only way to ensure his own prosperity and survival is through crushing the skulls of his kin. He is no doubt hesitant at first, but mentally he tells himself, "it's the only way" and in time it becomes an earnest belief. Others have felt somehow wronged by the world and acted on the erroneous belief that the only way to set things right was to wound the people of the world in any way possible... The motivations are myriad but one truth remains constant: even when they succeed they don't stand in an enviable position.
I don't get why that cynical but common expression from this context "human nature" refers to violence, at all. Over the course of human evolution there must have been a great deal of altruism and cooperation, even to the point of dealing in fair manner with members of competing tribes, or with children of competitor males. Mostly people had to help anything that was human which showed up on the horizon, rather than harm it, because the lions and bears were likely to eat you unless you had as many human brains working against THEM as possible. So when we say that our evolutionary history inevitably led to our status as such-and-so, that such-and-so ought to be thought of as cooperative, and helpful, not necessarily as warlike and violent.
A surprising article by the Washington Post:
The Neocons: An Illustrated Progression.
www.prisonexp.org
No comment.
Not yet, anyway. You start.
"Our planned two-week investigation into the psychology of prison life had to be ended prematurely after only six days because of what the situation was doing to the college students who participated. In only a few days, our guards became sadistic and our prisoners became depressed and showed signs of extreme stress."
What else is there to be said?
What about the real "evil" man called "Dubya?" He's the real monster behind that evil and sadistic war agaisn't Iraq. He cannot wash the blood of all those innocent people from his hands.
Blair was just a brown-nosing brit who followed the town idiot on his killing spree for oil.
They both belong behind bars.
Blair just wanted to feel important, and England to feel like a player against. They haven't come to terms with not being a power anymore - well I guess they're still a minor power, but are no longer one of the big dogs.
Blair just wanted to feel important, and England to feel like a player again.
Hey Pascal:
Regarding the prison experiment (of which I have heard before): I always like to think of myself as one of the few who would have thought for myself, rather than gotten co-opted into the weirdnesses and started accepting the idea of performing morally reprehensible actions just because it becomes "accepted" by other members of the group to do so.
I have good reasons to believe this noble description of myself. I wonder if you could read my evidence, below, and let me know what you know, as a medical doctor.
First, I know myself to have a rather non-group mentality. On many occasions when a group in which I was a member has decided almost unanimously to follow the leadership of a charismatic newcomer, I have nearly always been in the resistant minority. Generally I resist because I want to be the leader, myself, and therefore resent the intrusion; but some of my resistance has often been motivated by a rather nerdy, almost Asperger's-like insistence on plain dealing in plain facts, and therefore I seldom am swayed by "interpersonal charms" as much as I am swayed simply by policy analysis. For this reason I was not half as impressed with EITHER Reagan OR Clinton (though I tend to support the latter's policies, especially the economic ones, more often) as most adherents were. I simply don't care if a leader is charismatic.
A second reason I think this of myself, is that twice in my life I have found myself accidentally amid a cult indoctrination and yet have succeeded in having little interest in joining. On one occasion a type of "pyramid marketing" friendship (with money) scheme was making its rounds through recent undergraduate matriculants of a school where I was in graduate studies. Because I did a lot of theater, I knew a lot of these undergrads, and I saw them get involved with the scheme. When they invited me to a house party, I did not know that full "mind numbing" indoctrination would be scheduled; it took place, but I never joined. The whole "break down his identity, then build it up" simply didn't "take" on me. On a second occasion I lived in a city very near to the world headquarters of Scientology (spoken of before) and actually visited their center, was addressed by many levels of adherents over a three week period, and simply had no interest. Evidently marketing of the cult variety doesn't work on me?
Another reason I believe I'm less likely to go under, is that I've been in crowds and neither followed with them nor liked them. When the baseball team in my town won the World Series, a group congregated at a downtown intersection and soon was quite excited about whooping it up. I hated it; my girlfriend couldn't understand why I wanted to leave. I demanded that we depart. Later it turned out, many in the crowd had been injured by the crush. Her suggestion at the time had simply been, "All these people can't be wrong." For me, that's the definition of an oxymoron: All those people? They MUST be wrong! And having read Buford's "Among the Thugs" (hit a search engine, look it up!) I think I see what she's thinking about. Mass crowd rule takes over the human brain.
So, these are some good reasons which I have, for thinking I'm not swayed easily by that type of manipulation. But I wonder. What if I've been successfully manipulated by the puppeteers into THINKING I'm not easily swayed by manipulation? :)
Your thoughts?
We'll have to see what the good doctor has to say, but I find your evidence less than convincing. Everyone would like to believe they'd be different, but who really knows how we'd react unless we're actually put in that position. I'd like to see you take part in an experiment like that. You may be right, maybe you'd be different - but even you can't be 100% certain of that.
I can't help reflecting what evil grows out of good intentions...we have long forgotten the genesis; perhaps the (currently) most vocal have no recollection of 1991.
Iraq in vaded a peaceful, albeit insular and leisure-ridden neighbor. The world, outraged mounted an assault (yes the planet was almost united in their condemnation of Saddam's invasion of Kuwait) to free the tiny oppressed nation. The response, when finally mounted swept-up the invanders and, poised to follow through into the homeland of the aggressor; suddenly met with compassion for the benighted saddist's home nation, and the casualties they had sustained in the liberation of Kuwait.
Rather than make the region safe from Saddam's further aggression; liberal and sensitive voices condemned the liberators and confounded their ultimate goal of freeing the region from the threat of further sociopathic encroachement. The western and enlightened nations bearing the cost of the liberation were instead coerced into reneging on their commitments to the peoples of Iraq and International pressure from the third and non-alligned world nations inflicted a decade long siege of Saddam's empire while he murdered large numbers of his citizens.
Where was morality and 'non-violence' in all this? Because he was inflicting all these indignities on his own people did that make it their burden to liberate themselves without assistance; against the support from France and the former Soviet Union that shored up his bellicose state?
Lets face it he reneged on most if not all of his commitments under the UN negociated withdrawl from Kuwait. Like Versailles,but with his nation opaque to outside confirmation of his situations/intentions; he tried to assasinate G.H.W.Bush on a state visit to the region, how could any one contemplate the murder of a father as a sheer excersise of a paranoid-inspired states-revenge?
That Saddam's Iraq was in violation of the UN-imposed requirements of the 'truce' is indisputed, his murder of innocents who looked to his government for security is also indisputible fact, his contacts with international terrorism is more nebulous - but that stands to reason given the nut-jobs his secret police would be dealing with; all in all who can deny that removal of such a monster was due and; given the UN's reprieve in 1991 - long past overdue.
The loss of innocents is always a bad thing. No denial. The point, however is where the true responsibility lies. Aputation of the monster would have been better affected earlier, rather than later; and with fewer losses in the innocent category; that this regime-change had to wait 12 years; therein lies the responsibility for many of these innocent, collateral deaths.
anonymous, are you a CIA psyop? If not, you are badly indoctrinated by the media.
I can't even begin to correct your mistakes -- your whole piece is distorted. I'll just comment on the initial premise.
The reason for Saddam's invasion of Kuwait was that they were slant drilling oil from Iraq's side. There were other historical reasons, but that was the last straw.
U.S. actually gave Saddam the go ahead to invade Kuwait. But as soon as the invasion started Saddam discovered that it was a set up from U.S. side. This is what made him mad.
All this has been fully documented and is well known by now.
Final,
Sorry for the delay. Local circumstances in Lebanon, SSDD.
I too feel allergic to group behavior. As a kid, I became aware that I was too easily influenceable, and I really didn't like that about me, so I worked hard on changing it. The more I witness the mindlessness of groups, the less I want to renounce my thinking identity. So I can relate!
Re. Clinton, I have only one gripe against him: Kosovo. That war was as needless as Iraq#2. For the same reasons.
(Not really off-topic, in a thread about modern war crimes!)
Only once did I join in a crowd spirit. It was a deliberate and carefully thought out decision before I decided to go. And yet, I noticed that even while feeling as part of the group, I retained all my critical sense. That was on the historical day of the Cedar Revolution in 2005, we were about a million. The general elation and the charisma of the politicians didn't make me forget to listen to what they speeched, and to only cheer at what I approved.
A pity the following events proved me right: not all they said was worth cheering. :-(
And a lot of the cheerworthy stuff was just for crowdpleasing! Not that I'm surprised, but I had dared to hope...
Okay, enough about captivating me! :-)
My thoughts? You are a dangerous anarchist, a mind rebellious to any patriotism/nationalism/etcaeterism, and you should be promptly locked away in a cell right next to mine, before we corrupt society with our nasty habit of thinking at the wrong times!
But I can't tell whether you (or I) would have refused to JOIN the experience, or simply broken the pattern set by the others.
Still, I know one thing for sure: a person is still alive and well today, most probably because once I saw a group to which I deeply belonged go wrong, and I stood against it. At great personal cost, but I would do it again in a heartbeat.
In a way, I WAS in a similar experiment... for real. One of the "advantages" of living in Lebanon...
In all honesty, and objectively, I do find your evidence convincing in the light of my experience of people. And I think that this trait is in good part something from our nature, which education can little affect.
Every good dictator knows about the likes of you and I, and the need to deal with us by more than just charisma and peer pressure. Objectively, we admit that we never know until we've actually been tested for real. But humanly, sometimes we know.
Anon,
Sorry to contradict you about Iraq 1991, but it wasn't a matter of compassion. George Bush Sr. knew, for it was obvious, that if he overturned Saddam he would cause precisely the kind of anarchic chaos we are witnessing today. A dictator which you can pressure, because he has power and position that he doesen't want to lose, is by far the lesser evil when compared to rabid fanatics who use their own death as a weapon.
As for "contacts with international terrorism", in reality Saddam and Osama never could stand each other. There's too much distance and diverging interests between a laic dictator and a religious fanatic terrorist.
The excuses for attacking Iraq were emptier than a Darfuri's stomach. If the same standards for waging war on Saddam --or Milosevic, for that matter-- were to be applied worldwide, there would be a global nuclear holocaust in the next 12 hours.
"all in all who can deny that removal of such a monster was due"
One: He should never have been supported in power BY THE WEST in the first place!
Two: There were other ways to remove him from power.
Three: The way that was chosen led to a situation worse than Saddam's rule. Under the dictatorship, people knew that if they followed the rules, they would live. Today there ARE no more rules.
Four: The decision of the Bush-Cheney gang to go at the guy had nothing to do with equity and everything to do with sordid political calculations. If not worse: for the money racked via the Haliburton contracts.
Five: Don't believe the utopia that there exists an independant and neutral media that will tell you the real news, the whole news and nothing but the news. Ain't no such animal, man. We are all being brainwashed in broad daylight.
One example: when was the last time Hezbollah committed a genuine act of terrorism? I mean, something other than making war against Israel? It was in a past period where its leadership was practically the opposite of what it is today. The former leader of that time hates the guts of today's leader. But Fox News will NEVER tell you that. It might compromise the President's plans for "helping" Lebanon by dropping a few thousand bombs just before election day...
TTL reported...
"U.S. actually gave Saddam the go ahead to invade Kuwait. But as soon as the invasion started Saddam discovered that it was a set up from U.S. side. This is what made him mad."
Also, the US encouraged the shiites to revolt against Saddam at the end of the war... and then gave him the green light to fiercely repress that insurrection to which they had initially promised support. This may halp understand why the iraqi shiites, Saddam's sworn enemies, are somehow lacking in affection toward the American "liberators" today. Even without that little annoying incident called Abu Ghraib...
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