Sunday, April 04, 2010

Making Aggressive War OK, for Some

By David Swanson
April 4, 2010

When my friend Jodie Evans recently tried to make a citizen's arrest of Karl Rove, he declared the Downing Street Minutes to be "a complete fabrication." Of course, this "complete fabrication" was actually the minutes of an official meeting held by then British Prime Minister Tony Blair.

Read on.
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2 comments:

big em said...

I agree strongly with Mr Swanson's points and hope that the ICC does proceed as he desires.

That being said, however, I'm also very skeptical that it will have any significant effect on the US' aggressive militarism on the international scene. Besides the many UN resolutions that the US has ignored, there have even been formal International Court of Justice rulings* that were ignored. I see no reason why our militaristic state would agree to abide by yet another tribunal of international justice. There's such a 'rich' history of US military interventions in foreign countries that Dean Rusk could cite 103 of them** -- for 1798 - 1895 alone -- back in 1962 as support for yet another intervention in Cuba, while others list another 70 interventions between 1896 - 1941***, and an additional 55 between 1945 - 1994****.

Unfortunately, I have to believe that the only thing that might slow this down could be an economic situation, such as the price of petroleum going up 400-500 %. Too much of the US public likes it's romantic military myths... they like sitting back in their recliner watching war movies/programs where the US saves the day. They can even close their eyes to the huge portion of the US debt that the military budget creates. It's hard to envision it ending during my lifetime, especially now that the US draft is gone and nobody 'meaningful' has to die anymore.

* http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicaragua_v._United_States

** "A People's History of the US , 1492- Present", Howard Zinn, P290

*** "Killing Hope", William Blum, Appendix II
**** Ibid, Table of Contents

Sun Apr 04, 06:48:00 PM 2010
Anonymous said...

When I read Mr. Rademaker's column in the Washington Post the other day on the internet, I posted a comment that went along the lines of Mr. Swanson's comment. Mr. Swanson is absolutely and unquestionably right about this matter and it is shameful that more Americans act on this. I guess the feeling of American exceptionalism gives people the idea that we are good people whose leaders being Americans are good and so it would fracture this image to admit our leaders acted criminally.

Mon Apr 05, 10:32:00 AM 2010

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