There are a number of blatant ways for terrorist organizations \u2013 by which I mean national governments \u2013 to justify committing mass murder.<\/p>\n
Once you start killing, it\u2019s hard to stop. But you have to justify what you\u2019re doing \u2013 a process humanity has been engaged in since the dawn of civilization. We call it \u201cwar,\u201d which turns mass murder into a necessary abstraction and gives us a far simpler way of dealing with conflict than . . . oh my God, understanding counter points of view and creating solutions rather than enemies.<\/p>\n
This involves more than merely \u201cnegotiating\u201d peace \u2013 it requires\u00a0believing\u00a0in peace, which is a concept far more complex than simply a ceasefire. It\u2019s a living concept. And it seems to me that trying to reorganize our planet around this shimmering possibility is, as I have said previously, \u201cthe largest project<\/a>\u00a0the human race has ever undertaken.\u201d And it involves all of us.<\/p>\n So we have to stop being spectators, though this is the role the mass of humanity has been tucked into \u2013 either that or participants in the game of war, which is in full horror all around the planet right now, with nuclear war . . . planetary suicide . . . ever looming in the background. Why?<\/p>\n How can humanity be so blatantly flippant about its own suicide? Why are we so divided from ourselves? Let\u2019s undo the chains, shall we?<\/p>\n As a starting place, I revisit the State of the Union address George W. Bush delivered in 2002, in the wake of 9\/11, with the United States waging war in Afghanistan and prepping for an even bigger war in Iraq. The address, known to history as the\u00a0Axis of Evil<\/a>\u00a0speech, pulsates with spurious justifications for mass murder.<\/p>\n Justification #1 is that war is simple, clean and precise, producing outcomes that serve the good of the whole world: \u201cThe American flag,\u201d Bush declared, \u201cflies again over our embassy in Kabul. Terrorists who once occupied Afghanistan now occupy cells at Guantanamo Bay. . . .<\/p>\n \u201cAmerica and Afghanistan are now allies against terror. We will be partners in rebuilding that country.\u201d<\/p>\n Uh, the prez was a little off about this, since the U.S. didn\u2019t scuttle out of Afghanistan for nearly 20 more years, with several hundred thousand people killed and nothing accomplished. Somehow this never seems to matter \u2013 you know, the actual outcome of a particular war \u2013 since the next war always looms with so much excitement and necessity.<\/p>\n Justification #2 is what feeds this insanity. It\u2019s what you might call \u201ctakes one to know one.\u201d No matter how many bombs we drop, how many civilians we kill, our aims are just and righteous. But those other folks are acting on nothing but hatred: They have zero moral rectitude.<\/p>\n \u201cAnd the depth of their hatred is equaled by the madness of the destruction they design,\u201d Bush said.\u00a0\u00a0\u201c. . . What we have found in Afghanistan confirms that, far from ending there, our war against terror is only beginning. . . .<\/p>\n \u201cThese enemies view the entire world as a battlefield, and we must pursue them wherever they are.\u201d<\/p>\n But Bush really gets going when he brings in the planet\u2019s three premiere evil regimes: North Korea, Iran and Iraq, especially that last one:<\/p>\n \u201cIraq continues to flaunt its hostility toward America and to support terror. The Iraqi regime has plotted to develop anthrax and nerve gas and nuclear weapons for over a decade. This is a regime that has already used poison gas to murder thousands of its own citizens, leaving the bodies of mothers huddled over their dead children.\u201d<\/p>\n While in no way would I downplay, for instance, Saddam Hussein\u2019s dropping of mustard gas canisters on the Kurdish city of\u00a0Halabj<\/a>a during the Iran-Iraq war, killing as many as 60,000 people, the legitimacy of Bush\u2019s moral outrage disintegrates pretty quickly, when the actions of his own country are taken into account. Takes one to know one!<\/p>\n This country inflicted hell on Planet Earth during the Vietnam war, dropping some 11 million gallons<\/a> of\u00a0Agent Orang<\/a>e and eight million gallons of other herbicides on the country, ravaging some five million acres of forests, rivers and cropland. It\u2019s been linked to cancer, diabetes, birth defects and more.<\/p>\n \u201cThe Red Cross estimates that three million Vietnamese have been affected by dioxin, including at least 150,000 children born with serious birth defects,\u201d according to the Aspen Institute. \u201cMillions of Americans and Vietnamese are still affected, directly and indirectly, by the wartime U.S. spraying of Agent Orange and other herbicides over southern and central Vietnam.\u201d<\/p>\n The institute adds: \u201cLarge tracts of that land remain degraded and unproductive to this day.\u201d<\/p>\n But Bush nonetheless declared: \u201cHistory has called America and our allies to action, and it is both our responsibility and our privilege to fight freedom’s fight.\u201d<\/p>\n Carl Jung’s wor<\/a>ds<\/a>\u00a0may be a bit more on target: \u201cEverything that irritates us about others can lead us to an understanding of ourselves.\u201d<\/p>\n We all, as individuals, have a shadow side to our nature, as Jung pointed out: a dark place, where rage and despair seethe. There is also a\u00a0collective human shadow, which morphs into armies and, ultimately, into wars. Evil is externalized. The enemy easily becomes what we fear and hate about ourselves \u2013 which means we can kill it. But first we must dehumanize “the other,” and dehumanization is seductive. It’s also addictive. Is a world beyond war possible? Yes, I believe so \u2013 if we can face the collective shadow.<\/p>\n The post Takes One to Know One<\/a> appeared first on CounterPunch.org<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n This post was originally published on CounterPunch.org<\/a>. <\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" There are a number of blatant ways for terrorist organizations \u2013 by which I mean national governments \u2013 to justify committing mass murder. Once you start killing, it\u2019s hard to stop. But you have to justify what you\u2019re doing \u2013 a process humanity has been engaged in since the dawn of civilization. We call it More<\/a><\/p>\n The post Takes One to Know One<\/a> appeared first on CounterPunch.org<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":526,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1391238"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/526"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1391238"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1391238\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1391239,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1391238\/revisions\/1391239"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1391238"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1391238"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1391238"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}