Mr. Eraser Head & The Dept. Of Erections Says, "Oo-

Exploration of Conspiracy Theories from Perspective of Esoteric Traditions

Moderator: yorick

Mr. Eraser Head & The Dept. Of Erections Says, "Oo-

Postby wsduncanb » Fri May 20, 2005 12:45 am

"Prof. Ward Churchill didn't just
make me rock-solid hard, but he
got this old brown-shoe off too!"
--AT3 W.S. Duncan-Binns, CVN-71.

"They're like CATHOLIC PRIESTS
For Christ's Sake! The pot's
Accusing the kettle of turning
A CANCEROUS black." -- Spc4
Jessica "Baby" Lynch speaking before
the COLORADO Dept. Of Corrections about
the shameful excessess taken at the
ABU GHARIB Prison in IRAQ. "An
inappropriate hard-on is absolutely
shameful to a muslim." Laughter.

When queried by reporters concerning his views on the assassination
of John F. Kennedy in November 1963, Malcolm X famously – and quite
charitably, all things considered – replied that it was merely a case
of "chickens coming home to roost."

On the morning of September 11, 2001, a few more chickens – along
with some half-million dead Iraqi children – came home to roost in a
very big way at the twin towers of New York's World Trade Center.
Well, actually, a few of them seem to have nestled in at the Pentagon
as well.

The Iraqi youngsters, all of them under 12, died as a predictable –
in fact, widely predicted – result of the 1991 US "surgical" bombing
of their country's water purification and sewage facilities, as well
as other "infrastructural" targets upon which Iraq's civilian
population depends for its very survival.

If the nature of the bombing were not already bad enough – and it
should be noted that this sort of "aerial warfare" constitutes a
Class I Crime Against humanity, entailing myriad gross violations of
international law, as well as every conceivable standard
of "civilized" behavior – the death toll has been steadily ratcheted
up by US-imposed sanctions for a full decade now. Enforced all the
while by a massive military presence and periodic bombing raids, the
embargo has greatly impaired the victims' ability to import the
nutrients, medicines and other materials necessary to saving the
lives of even their toddlers.

All told, Iraq has a population of about 18 million. The 500,000 kids
lost to date thus represent something on the order of 25 percent of
their age group. Indisputably, the rest have suffered – are still
suffering – a combination of physical debilitation and psychological
trauma severe enough to prevent their ever fully recovering. In
effect, an entire generation has been obliterated.

The reason for this holocaust was/is rather simple, and stated quite
straightforwardly by President George Bush, the 41st "freedom-loving"
father of the freedom-lover currently filling the Oval Office, George
the 43rd: "The world must learn that what we say, goes," intoned
George the Elder to the enthusiastic applause of freedom-loving
Americans everywhere. How Old George conveyed his message was
certainly no mystery to the US public. One need only recall the 24-
hour-per-day dissemination of bombardment videos on every available
TV channel, and the exceedingly high ratings of these telecasts, to
gain a sense of how much they knew.

In trying to affix a meaning to such things, we would do well to
remember the wave of elation that swept America at reports of what
was happening along the so-called Highway of Death: perhaps
100,000 "towel-heads" and "camel jockeys" – or was it "sand niggers"
that week? – in full retreat, routed and effectively defenseless,
many of them conscripted civilian laborers, slaughtered in a single
day by jets firing the most hyper-lethal types of ordnance. It was a
performance worthy of the nazis during the early months of their
drive into Russia. And it should be borne in mind that Good Germans
gleefully cheered that butchery, too. Indeed, support for Hitler
suffered no serious erosion among Germany's "innocent civilians"
until the defeat at Stalingrad in 1943.

There may be a real utility to reflecting further, this time upon the
fact that it was pious Americans who led the way in assigning the
onus of collective guilt to the German people as a whole, not for
things they as individuals had done, but for what they had allowed –
nay, empowered – their leaders and their soldiers to do in their
name.

If the principle was valid then, it remains so now, as applicable to
Good Americans as it was the Good Germans. And the price exacted from
the Germans for the faultiness of their moral fiber was truly
ghastly. Returning now to the children, and to the effects of the
post-Gulf War embargo – continued bull force by Bush the Elder's
successors in the Clinton administration as a gesture of
its "resolve" to finalize what George himself had dubbed the "New
World Order" of American military/economic domination – it should be
noted that not one but two high United Nations officials attempting
to coordinate delivery of humanitarian aid to Iraq resigned in
succession as protests against US policy.

One of them, former U.N. Assistant Secretary General Denis Halladay,
repeatedly denounced what was happening as "a systematic
program . . . of deliberate genocide." His statements appeared in the
New York Times and other papers during the fall of 1998, so it can
hardly be contended that the American public was "unaware" of them.
Shortly thereafter, Secretary of State Madeline Albright openly
confirmed Halladay's assessment. Asked during the widely-viewed TV
program Meet the Press to respond to his "allegations," she calmly
announced that she'd decided it was "worth the price" to see that
U.S. objectives were achieved.


The Politics of a Perpetrator Population
As a whole, the American public greeted these revelations with
yawns.. There were, after all, far more pressing things than the
unrelenting misery/death of a few hundred thousand Iraqi tikes to be
concerned with. Getting "Jeremy" and "Ellington" to their weekly
soccer game, for instance, or seeing to it that little "Tiffany"
and "Ashley" had just the right roll-neck sweaters to go with their
new cords. And, to be sure, there was the yuppie holy war against
ashtrays – for "our kids," no less – as an all-absorbing point of
political focus.

In fairness, it must be admitted that there was an infinitesimally
small segment of the body politic who expressed opposition to what
was/is being done to the children of Iraq. It must also be conceded,
however, that those involved by-and-large contented themselves with
signing petitions and conducting candle-lit prayer vigils,
bearing "moral witness" as vast legions of brown-skinned five-year-
olds sat shivering in the dark, wide-eyed in horror, whimpering as
they expired in the most agonizing ways imaginable.

Be it said as well, and this is really the crux of it, that
the "resistance" expended the bulk of its time and energy harnessed
to the systemically-useful task of trying to ensure, as "a principle
of moral virtue" that nobody went further than waving signs as a
means of "challenging" the patently exterminatory pursuit of Pax
Americana. So pure of principle were these "dissidents," in fact,
that they began literally to supplant the police in protecting
corporations profiting by the carnage against suffering such
retaliatory "violence" as having their windows broken by persons
less "enlightened" – or perhaps more outraged – than the self-
anointed "peacekeepers."

Property before people, it seems – or at least the equation of
property to people – is a value by no means restricted to America's
boardrooms. And the sanctimony with which such putrid sentiments are
enunciated turns out to be nauseatingly similar, whether mouthed by
the CEO of Standard Oil or any of the swarm of comfort
zone "pacifists" queuing up to condemn the black block after it ever
so slightly disturbed the functioning of business-as-usual in
Seattle.

Small wonder, all-in-all, that people elsewhere in the world – the
Mideast, for instance – began to wonder where, exactly, aside from
the streets of the US itself, one was to find the peace America's
purportedly oppositional peacekeepers claimed they were keeping.

The answer, surely, was plain enough to anyone unblinded by the kind
of delusions engendered by sheer vanity and self-absorption. So, too,
were the implications in terms of anything changing, out there, in
America's free-fire zones.

Tellingly, it was at precisely this point – with the genocide in Iraq
officially admitted and a public response demonstrating beyond a
shadow of a doubt that there were virtually no Americans, including
most of those professing otherwise, doing anything tangible to stop
it – that the combat teams which eventually commandeered the aircraft
used on September 11 began to infiltrate the United States.


Meet the "Terrorists"
Of the men who came, there are a few things demanding to be said in
the face of the unending torrent of disinformational drivel unleashed
by George Junior and the corporate "news" media immediately following
their successful operation on September 11.

They did not, for starters, "initiate" a war with the US, much less
commit "the first acts of war of the new millennium."

A good case could be made that the war in which they were combatants
has been waged more-or-less continuously by the "Christian West" –
now proudly emblematized by the United States – against the "Islamic
East" since the time of the First Crusade, about 1,000 years ago.
More recently, one could argue that the war began when Lyndon Johnson
first lent significant support to Israel's dispossession/displacement
of Palestinians during the 1960s, or when George the Elder
ordered "Desert Shield" in 1990, or at any of several points in
between. Any way you slice it, however, if what the combat teams did
to the WTC and the Pentagon can be understood as acts of war – and
they can – then the same is true of every US "overflight' of Iraqi
territory since day one. The first acts of war during the current
millennium thus occurred on its very first day, and were carried out
by U.S. aviators acting under orders from their then-commander-in-
chief, Bill Clinton. The most that can honestly be said of those
involved on September 11 is that they finally responded in kind to
some of what this country has dispensed to their people as a matter
of course.

That they waited so long to do so is, notwithstanding the 1993 action
at the WTC, more than anything a testament to their patience and
restraint.

They did not license themselves to "target innocent civilians."

There is simply no argument to be made that the Pentagon personnel
killed on September 11 fill that bill. The building and those inside
comprised military targets, pure and simple. As to those in the World
Trade Center . . .

Well, really. Let's get a grip here, shall we? True enough, they were
civilians of a sort. But innocent? Gimme a break. They formed a
technocratic corps at the very heart of America's global financial
empire – the "mighty engine of profit" to which the military
dimension of U.S. policy has always been enslaved – and they did so
both willingly and knowingly. Recourse to "ignorance" – a derivative,
after all, of the word "ignore" – counts as less than an excuse among
this relatively well-educated elite. To the extent that any of them
were unaware of the costs and consequences to others of what they
were involved in – and in many cases excelling at – it was because of
their absolute refusal to see. More likely, it was because they were
too busy braying, incessantly and self-importantly, into their cell
phones, arranging power lunches and stock transactions, each of which
translated, conveniently out of sight, mind and smelling distance,
into the starved and rotting flesh of infants. If there was a better,
more effective, or in fact any other way of visiting some penalty
befitting their participation upon the little Eichmanns inhabiting
the sterile sanctuary of the twin towers, I'd really be interested in
hearing about it.

The men who flew the missions against the WTC and Pentagon were
not "cowards." That distinction properly belongs to the "firm-jawed
lads" who delighted in flying stealth aircraft through the undefended
airspace of Baghdad, dropping payload after payload of bombs on
anyone unfortunate enough to be below – including tens of thousands
of genuinely innocent civilians – while themselves incurring all the
risk one might expect during a visit to the local video arcade. Still
more, the word describes all those "fighting men and women" who sat
at computer consoles aboard ships in the Persian Gulf, enjoying air-
conditioned comfort while launching cruise missiles into
neighborhoods filled with random human beings. Whatever else can be
said of them, the men who struck on September 11 manifested the
courage of their convictions, willingly expending their own lives in
attaining their objectives.

Nor were they "fanatics" devoted to "Islamic fundamentalism."

One might rightly describe their actions as "desperate." Feelings of
desperation, however, are a perfectly reasonable – one is tempted to
say "normal" – emotional response among persons confronted by the
mass murder of their children, particularly when it appears that
nobody else really gives a damn (ask a Jewish survivor about this
one, or, even more poignantly, for all the attention paid them, a
Gypsy).

That desperate circumstances generate desperate responses is no
mysterious or irrational principle, of the sort motivating fanatics.
Less is it one peculiar to Islam. Indeed, even the FBI's
investigative reports on the combat teams' activities during the
months leading up to September 11 make it clear that the members were
not fundamentalist Muslims. Rather, it's pretty obvious at this point
that they were secular activists – soldiers, really – who, while
undoubtedly enjoying cordial relations with the clerics of their
countries, were motivated far more by the grisly realities of the
U.S. war against them than by a set of religious beliefs.

And still less were they/their acts "insane."

Insanity is a condition readily associable with the very American
idea that one – or one's country – holds what amounts to a "divine
right" to commit genocide, and thus to forever do so with impunity.
The term might also be reasonably applied to anyone suffering
genocide without attempting in some material way to bring the process
to a halt. Sanity itself, in this frame of reference, might be
defined by a willingness to try and destroy the perpetrators and/or
the sources of their ability to commit their crimes. (Shall we now
discuss the US "strategic bombing campaign" against Germany during
World War II, and the mental health of those involved in it?)

Which takes us to official characterizations of the combat teams as
an embodiment of "evil."

Evil – for those inclined to embrace the banality of such a concept –
was perfectly incarnated in that malignant toad known as Madeline
Albright, squatting in her studio chair like Jaba the Hutt, blandly
spewing the news that she'd imposed a collective death sentence upon
the unoffending youth of Iraq. Evil was to be heard in that great
American hero "Stormin' Norman" Schwartzkopf's utterly dehumanizing
dismissal of their systematic torture and annihilation as
mere "collateral damage." Evil, moreover, is a term appropriate to
describing the mentality of a public that finds such perspectives and
the policies attending them acceptable, or even momentarily
tolerable.

Had it not been for these evils, the counterattacks of September 11
would never have occurred. And unless "the world is rid of such
evil," to lift a line from George Junior, September 11 may well end
up looking like a lark.

There is no reason, after all, to believe that the teams deployed in
the assaults on the WTC and the Pentagon were the only such, that the
others are composed of "Arabic-looking individuals" – America's
indiscriminately lethal arrogance and psychotic sense of self-
entitlement have long since given the great majority of the world's
peoples ample cause to be at war with it – or that they are in any
way dependent upon the seizure of civilian airliners to complete
their missions.

To the contrary, there is every reason to expect that there are many
other teams in place, tasked to employ altogether different tactics
in executing operational plans at least as well-crafted as those
evident on September 11, and very well equipped for their jobs. This
is to say that, since the assaults on the WTC and Pentagon were act
of war – not "terrorist incidents" – they must be understood as
components in a much broader strategy designed to achieve specific
results. From this, it can only be adduced that there are plenty of
other components ready to go, and that they will be used, should this
become necessary in the eyes of the strategists. It also seems a safe
bet that each component is calibrated to inflict damage at a level
incrementally higher than the one before (during the 1960s, the
Johnson administration employed a similar policy against Vietnam,
referred to as "escalation").

Since implementation of the overall plan began with the WTC/Pentagon
assaults, it takes no rocket scientist to decipher what is likely to
happen next, should the U.S. attempt a response of the inexcusable
variety to which it has long entitled itself.


About Those Boys (and Girls) in the Bureau
There's another matter begging for comment at this point. The idea
that the FBI's "counterterrorism task forces" can do a thing to
prevent what will happen is yet another dimension of America's
delusional pathology.. The fact is that, for all its publicly-
financed "image-building" exercises, the Bureau has never shown the
least aptitude for anything of the sort.

Oh, yeah, FBI counterintelligence personnel have proven quite adept
at framing anarchists, communists and Black Panthers, sometimes
murdering them in their beds or the electric chair. The Bureau's SWAT
units have displayed their ability to combat child abuse in Waco by
burning babies alive, and its vaunted Crime Lab has been shown to pad
its "crime-fighting' statistics by fabricating evidence against many
an alleged car thief. But actual "heavy-duty bad guys" of the sort at
issue now? This isn't a Bruce Willis/Chuck Norris/Sly Stallone movie,
after all.. And J. Edgar Hoover doesn't get to approve either the
script or the casting.

The number of spies, saboteurs and bona fide terrorists apprehended,
or even detected by the FBI in the course of its long and slimy
history could be counted on one's fingers and toes. On occasion, its
agents have even turned out to be the spies, and, in many instances,
the terrorists as well.

To be fair once again, if the Bureau functions as at best a carnival
of clowns where its "domestic security responsibilities" are
concerned, this is because – regardless of official hype – it has
none. It is now, as it's always been, the national political police
force, an instrument created and perfected to ensure that all
Americans, not just the consenting mass, are "free" to do exactly as
they're told.

The FBI and "cooperating agencies" can be thus relied upon to set
about "protecting freedom" by destroying whatever rights and
liberties were left to U.S. citizens before September 11 (in fact,
they've already received authorization to begin). Sheeplike, the
great majority of Americans can also be counted upon to bleat their
approval, at least in the short run, believing as they always do that
the nasty implications of what they're doing will pertain only to
others.

Oh Yeah, and "The Company," Too

A possibly even sicker joke is the notion, suddenly in vogue, that
the CIA will be able to pinpoint "terrorist threats," "rooting out
their infrastructure" where it exists and/or "terminating" it before
it can materialize, if only it's allowed to beef up its "human
intelligence gathering capacity" in an unrestrained manner (including
full-bore operations inside the US, of course).

Yeah. Right.

Since America has a collective attention-span of about 15 minutes, a
little refresher seems in order: "The Company" had something like a
quarter-million people serving as "intelligence assets" by feeding it
information in Vietnam in 1968, and it couldn't even predict the Tet
Offensive. God knows how many spies it was fielding against the USSR
at the height of Ronald Reagan's version of the Cold War, and it was
still caught flatfooted by the collapse of the Soviet Union. As to
destroying "terrorist infrastructures," one would do well to remember
Operation Phoenix, another product of its open season in Vietnam. In
that one, the CIA enlisted elite US units like the Navy Seals and
Army Special Forces, as well as those of friendly countries – the
south Vietnamese Rangers, for example, and Australian SAS – to run
around "neutralizing" folks targeted by The Company's legion of
snitches as "guerrillas" (as those now known as "terrorists" were
then called).

Sound familiar?

Upwards of 40,000 people – mostly bystanders, as it turns out – were
murdered by Phoenix hit teams before the guerrillas, stronger than
ever, ran the US and its collaborators out of their country
altogether. And these are the guys who are gonna save the day, if
unleashed to do their thing in North America?

The net impact of all this "counterterrorism" activity upon the
combat teams' ability to do what they came to do, of course, will be
nil.

Instead, it's likely to make it easier for them to operate (it's
worked that way in places like Northern Ireland). And, since denying
Americans the luxury of reaping the benefits of genocide in comfort
was self-evidently a key objective of the WTC/Pentagon assaults, it
can be stated unequivocally that a more overt display of the police
state mentality already pervading this country simply confirms the
magnitude of their victory.


On Matters of Proportion and Intent
As things stand, including the 1993 detonation at the WTC, "Arab
terrorists" have responded to the massive and sustained American
terror bombing of Iraq with a total of four assaults by explosives
inside the US. That's about 1% of the 50,000 bombs the Pentagon
announced were rained on Baghdad alone during the Gulf War (add in
Oklahoma City and you'll get something nearer an actual 1%).

They've managed in the process to kill about 5,000 Americans, or
roughly 1% of the dead Iraqi children (the percentage is far smaller
if you factor in the killing of adult Iraqi civilians, not to mention
troops butchered as/after they'd surrendered and/or after the "war-
ending" ceasefire had been announced).

In terms undoubtedly more meaningful to the property/profit-minded
American mainstream, they've knocked down a half-dozen buildings –
albeit some very well-chosen ones – as opposed to the "strategic
devastation" visited upon the whole of Iraq, and punched a $100
billion hole in the earnings outlook of major corporate shareholders,
as opposed to the U.S. obliteration of Iraq's entire economy.

With that, they've given Americans a tiny dose of their own
medicine.. This might be seen as merely a matter of "vengeance"
or "retribution," and, unquestionably, America has earned it, even if
it were to add up only to something so ultimately petty.

The problem is that vengeance is usually framed in terms of "getting
even," a concept which is plainly inapplicable in this instance. As
the above data indicate, it would require another 49,996 detonations
killing 495,000 more Americans, for the "terrorists" to "break even"
for the bombing of Baghdad/extermination of Iraqi children alone. And
that's to achieve "real number" parity. To attain an actual
proportional parity of damage – the US is about 15 times as large as
Iraq in terms of population, even more in terms of territory – they
would, at a minimum, have to blow up about 300,000 more buildings and
kill something on the order of 7.5 million people.

Were this the intent of those who've entered the US to wage war
against it, it would remain no less true that America and Americans
were only receiving the bill for what they'd already done. Payback,
as they say, can be a real motherfucker (ask the Germans). There is,
however, no reason to believe that retributive parity is necessarily
an item on the agenda of those who planned the WTC/Pentagon
operation. If it were, given the virtual certainty that they
possessed the capacity to have inflicted far more damage than they
did, there would be a lot more American bodies lying about right now.

Hence, it can be concluded that ravings carried by the "news" media
since September 11 have contained at least one grain of truth: The
peoples of the Mideast "aren't like" Americans, not least because
they don't "value life' in the same way. By this, it should be
understood that Middle-Easterners, unlike Americans, have no history
of exterminating others purely for profit, or on the basis of racial
animus. Thus, we can appreciate the fact that they value life – all
lives, not just their own – far more highly than do their U.S.
counterparts.


The Makings of a Humanitarian Strategy
In sum one can discern a certain optimism – it might even be call
humanitarianism – imbedded in the thinking of those who presided over
the very limited actions conducted on September 11.

Their logic seems to have devolved upon the notion that the American
people have condoned what has been/is being done in their name –
indeed, are to a significant extent actively complicit in it – mainly
because they have no idea what it feels like to be on the receiving
end.

Now they do.

That was the "medicinal" aspect of the attacks.

To all appearances, the idea is now to give the tonic a little time
to take effect, jolting Americans into the realization that the sort
of pain they're now experiencing first-hand is no different from – or
the least bit more excruciating than – that which they've been so
cavalier in causing others, and thus to respond appropriately.

More bluntly, the hope was – and maybe still is – that Americans,
stripped of their presumed immunity from incurring any real
consequences for their behavior, would comprehend and act upon a
formulation as uncomplicated as "stop killing our kids, if you want
your own to be safe."

Either way, it's a kind of "reality therapy" approach, designed to
afford the American people a chance to finally "do the right thing"
on their own, without further coaxing.

Were the opportunity acted upon in some reasonably good faith
fashion – a sufficiently large number of Americans rising up and
doing whatever is necessary to force an immediate lifting of the
sanctions on Iraq, for instance, or maybe hanging a few of America's
abundant supply of major war criminals (Henry Kissinger comes quickly
to mind, as do Madeline Albright, Colin Powell, Bill Clinton and
George the Elder) – there is every reason to expect that military
operations against the US on its domestic front would be immediately
suspended.

Whether they would remain so would of course be contingent upon
follow-up. By that, it may be assumed that American acceptance of
onsite inspections by international observers to verify destruction
of its weapons of mass destruction (as well as dismantlement of all
facilities in which more might be manufactured), Nuremberg-style
trials in which a few thousand US military/corporate personnel could
be properly adjudicated and punished for their Crimes Against
humanity, and payment of reparations to the array of nations/peoples
whose assets the US has plundered over the years, would suffice.

Since they've shown no sign of being unreasonable or vindictive, it
may even be anticipated that, after a suitable period of adjustment
and reeducation (mainly to allow them to acquire the skills necessary
to living within their means), those restored to control over their
own destinies by the gallant sacrifices of the combat teams the WTC
and Pentagon will eventually (re)admit Americans to the global circle
of civilized societies. Stranger things have happened.


In the Alternative
Unfortunately, noble as they may have been, such humanitarian
aspirations were always doomed to remain unfulfilled. For it to have
been otherwise, a far higher quality of character and intellect would
have to prevail among average Americans than is actually the case.
Perhaps the strategists underestimated the impact a couple of
generations-worth of media indoctrination can produce in terms of
demolishing the capacity of human beings to form coherent thoughts.
Maybe they forgot to factor in the mind-numbing effects of the
indoctrination passed off as education in the US. Then, again, it's
entirely possible they were aware that a decisive majority of
American adults have been reduced by this point to a level much
closer to the kind of immediate self-gratification entailed in
Pavlovian stimulus/response patterns than anything accessible by
appeals to higher logic, and still felt morally obliged to offer the
dolts an option to quit while they were ahead.

What the hell? It was worth a try.

But it's becoming increasingly apparent that the dosage of medicine
administered was entirely insufficient to accomplish its purpose.

Although there are undoubtedly exceptions, Americans for the most
part still don't get it.

Already, they've desecrated the temporary tomb of those killed in the
WTC, staging a veritable pep rally atop the mangled remains of those
they profess to honor, treating the whole affair as if it were some
bizarre breed of contact sport. And, of course, there are the
inevitable pom-poms shaped like American flags, the school colors
worn as little red-white-and-blue ribbons affixed to labels,
sportscasters in the form of "counterterrorism experts" drooling
mindless color commentary during the pregame warm-up.

Refusing the realization that the world has suddenly shifted its
axis, and that they are therefore no longer "in charge," they have by-
and-large reverted instantly to type, working themselves into their
usual bloodlust on the now obsolete premise that the bloodletting
will "naturally" occur elsewhere and to someone else.

"Patriotism," a wise man once observed, "is the last refuge of
scoundrels."

And the braided, he might of added.

Braided Scoundrel-in-Chief, George Junior, lacking even the sense to
be careful what he wished for, has teamed up with a gaggle of
fundamentalist Christian clerics like Billy Graham to proclaim a "New
Crusade" called "Infinite Justice" aimed at "ridding the world of
evil."

One could easily make light of such rhetoric, remarking upon how
unseemly it is for a son to threaten his father in such fashion – or
a president to so publicly contemplate the murder/suicide of himself
and his cabinet – but the matter is deadly serious.

They are preparing once again to sally forth for the purpose of
roasting brown-skinned children by the scores of thousands. Already,
the B-1 bombers and the aircraft carriers and the missile frigates
are en route, the airborne divisions are gearing up to go.

To where? Afghanistan?

The Sudan?

Iraq, again (or still)?

How about Grenada (that was fun)?

Any of them or all. It doesn't matter.

The desire to pummel the helpless runs rabid as ever.

Only, this time it's different.

The time the helpless aren't, or at least are not so helpless as they
were.

This time, somewhere, perhaps in an Afghani mountain cave, possibly
in a Brooklyn basement, maybe another local altogether – but
somewhere, all the same – there's a grim-visaged (wo)man wearing a
Clint Eastwood smile.

"Go ahead, punks," s/he's saying, "Make my day."

And when they do, when they launch these airstrikes abroad – or may a
little later; it will be at a time conforming to the "terrorists"'
own schedule, and at a place of their choosing – the next more
intensive dose of medicine administered here "at home."

Of what will it consist this time? Anthrax? Mustard gas? Sarin? A
tactical nuclear device?

That, too, is their choice to make.

Looking back, it will seem to future generations inexplicable why
Americans were unable on their own, and in time to save themselves,
to accept a rule of nature so basic that it could be mouthed by an
actor, Lawrence Fishburn, in a movie, The Cotton Club.

"You've got to learn, " the line went, "that when you push people
around, some people push back."

As they should.

As they must.

And as they undoubtedly will.

There is justice in such symmetry.


ADDENDUM
The preceding was a "first take" reading, more a stream-of-
consciousness interpretive reaction to the September 11 counterattack
than a finished piece on the topic. Hence, I'll readily admit that
I've been far less than thorough, and quite likely wrong about a
number of things.

For instance, it may not have been (only) the ghosts of Iraqi
children who made their appearance that day. It could as easily have
been some or all of their butchered Palestinian cousins.

Or maybe it was some or all of the at least 3.2 million Indochinese
who perished as a result of America's sustained and genocidal assault
on Southeast Asia (1959-1975), not to mention the millions more
who've died because of the sanctions imposed thereafter.

Perhaps there were a few of the Korean civilians massacred by US
troops at places like No Gun Ri during the early `50s, or the
hundreds of thousands of Japanese civilians ruthlessly incinerated in
the ghastly fire raids of World War II (only at Dresden did America
bomb Germany in a similar manner).

And, of course, it could have been those vaporized in the militarily
pointless nuclear bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

There are others, as well, a vast and silent queue of faceless
victims, stretching from the million-odd Filipinos slaughtered during
America's "Indian War" in their islands at the beginning of the
twentieth century, through the real Indians, America's own, massacred
wholesale at places like Horseshoe Bend and the Bad Axe, Sand Creek
and Wounded Knee, the Washita, Bear River, and the Marias.

Was it those who expired along the Cherokee Trial of Tears of the
Long Walk of the Navajo?

Those murdered by smallpox at Fort Clark in 1836?

Starved to death in the concentration camp at Bosque Redondo during
the 1860s?

Maybe those native people claimed for scalp bounty in all 48 of the
continental US states? Or the Raritans whose severed heads were
kicked for sport along the streets of what was then called New
Amsterdam, at the very site where the WTC once stood?

One hears, too, the whispers of those lost on the Middle Passage, and
of those whose very flesh was sold in the slave market outside the
human kennel from whence Wall Street takes its name. And of coolie
laborers, imported by the gross-dozen to lay the tracks of empire
across scorching desert sands, none of them allotted "a Chinaman's
chance" of surviving.

The list is too long, too awful to go on.

No matter what its eventual fate, America will have gotten off very,
very cheap.

The full measure of its guilt can never be fully balanced or atoned
for.

Ward Churchill (Keetoowah Band Cherokee) is one of the most outspoken
of Native American activists. In his lectures and numerous published
works, he explores the themes of genocide in the Americas, historical
and legal (re)interpretation of conquest and colonization, literary
and cinematic criticism, and indigenist alternatives to the status
quo. Churchill is a Professor of Ethnic Studies and Coordinator of
American Indian Studies. He is also a past national spokesperson for
the Leonard Peltier Defense Committee. His books include Agents of
Repression, Fantasies of the Master Race, From a Native Son and A
Little Matter of Genocide: Holocaust and Denial in the Americas.
"I´ve already been executed,
I´m just waiting to die." -wsdb

W.S. Duncan-Binns
Apartado 0815-00349
Cuidad Panama
Republica De Panama
Central America
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