Noam Chomsky: American Amnesia - We Forget Our Atrocities Almost As Soon As We Commit Them

http://www.alternet.org/rights/140137/american_amnesia%3A_we_forget_our_atrocities_almost_as_soon_as_we_commit_them

American Amnesia: We Forget Our Atrocities Almost As Soon as We Commit Them
By Noam Chomsky, Tomdispatch.com. Posted May 20, 2009.

Historical amnesia is a dangerous social phenomenon because it lays the groundwork for crimes that still lie ahead.

The torture memos released by the White House elicited shock, indignation, and surprise. The shock and indignation are understandable. The surprise, less so.

- snip -

Accordingly, what's surprising is to see the reactions to the release of those Justice Department memos, even by some of the most eloquent and forthright critics of Bush malfeasance: Paul Krugman, for example, writing that we used to be "a nation of moral ideals" and never before Bush "have our leaders so utterly betrayed everything our nation stands for." To say the least, that common view reflects a rather slanted version of American history.

- snip -

Let us then turn to "reality itself": the "idea" of America from its earliest days.

"Come Over and Help Us"

The inspirational phrase "city on a hill" was coined by John Winthrop in 1630, borrowing from the Gospels, and outlining the glorious future of a new nation "ordained by God." One year earlier his Massachusetts Bay Colony created its Great Seal. It depicted an Indian with a scroll coming out of his mouth. On that scroll are the words "Come over and help us." The British colonists were thus pictured as benevolent humanists, responding to the pleas of the miserable natives to be rescued from their bitter pagan fate.

The Great Seal is, in fact, a graphic representation of "the idea of America," from its birth. It should be exhumed from the depths of the psyche and displayed on the walls of every classroom. It should certainly appear in the background of all of the Kim Il-Sung-style worship of that savage murderer and torturer Ronald Reagan, who blissfully described himself as the leader of a "shining city on the hill," while orchestrating some of the more ghastly crimes of his years in office, notoriously in Central America but elsewhere as well.

The Great Seal was an early proclamation of "humanitarian intervention," to use the currently fashionable phrase. As has commonly been the case since, the "humanitarian intervention" led to a catastrophe for the alleged beneficiaries. The first Secretary of War, General Henry Knox, described "the utter extirpation of all the Indians in most populous parts of the Union" by means "more destructive to the Indian natives than the conduct of the conquerors of Mexico and Peru."

- snip -

Creating Terrorists

There is still much debate about whether torture has been effective in eliciting information -- the assumption being, apparently, that if it is effective, then it may be justified. By the same argument, when Nicaragua captured U.S. pilot Eugene Hasenfuss in 1986, after shooting down his plane delivering aid to U.S.-supported Contra forces, they should not have tried him, found him guilty, and then sent him back to the U.S., as they did. Instead, they should have applied the CIA torture paradigm to try to extract information about other terrorist atrocities being planned and implemented in Washington, no small matter for a tiny, impoverished country under terrorist attack by the global superpower.

By the same standards, if the Nicaraguans had been able to capture the chief terrorism coordinator, John Negroponte, then U.S. ambassador in Honduras (later appointed as the first Director of National Intelligence, essentially counterterrorism czar, without eliciting a murmur), they should have done the same. Cuba would have been justified in acting similarly, had the Castro government been able to lay hands on the Kennedy brothers. There is no need to bring up what their victims should have done to Henry Kissinger, Ronald Reagan, and other leading terrorist commanders, whose exploits leave al-Qaeda in the dust, and who doubtless had ample information that could have prevented further "ticking bomb" attacks.

Such considerations never seem to arise in public discussion.

There is, to be sure, a response: our terrorism, even if surely terrorism, is benign, deriving as it does from the city on the hill.

Perhaps culpability would be greater, by prevailing moral standards, if it were discovered that Bush administration torture had cost American lives. That is, in fact, the conclusion drawn by Major Matthew Alexander (a pseudonym), one of the most seasoned U.S. interrogators in Iraq, who elicited "the information that led to the US military being able to locate Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the head of al-Qa'ida in Iraq," correspondent Patrick Cockburn reports.

- snip -

Unexceptional Americans

Another standard pretext for torture is the context: the "war on terror" that Bush declared after 9/11. A crime that rendered traditional international law "quaint" and "obsolete" -- so George W. Bush was advised by his legal counsel Alberto Gonzales, later appointed Attorney General. The doctrine has been widely reiterated in one form or another in commentary and analysis.

The 9/11 attack was doubtless unique in many respects. One is where the guns were pointing: typically it is in the opposite direction. In fact, it was the first attack of any consequence on the national territory of the United States since the British burned down Washington in 1814.

Another unique feature was the scale of terror perpetrated by a non-state actor.

Horrifying as it was, however, it could have been worse. Suppose that the perpetrators had bombed the White House, killed the president, and established a vicious military dictatorship that killed 50,000 to 100,000 people and tortured 700,000, set up a huge international terror center that carried out assassinations and helped impose comparable military dictatorships elsewhere, and implemented economic doctrines that so radically dismantled the economy that the state had to virtually take it over a few years later.

That would indeed have been far worse than September 11, 2001. And it happened in Salvador Allende's Chile in what Latin Americans often call "the first 9/11" in 1973. (The numbers above were changed to per-capita U.S. equivalents, a realistic way of measuring crimes.) Responsibility for the military coup against Allende can be traced straight back to Washington. Accordingly, the otherwise quite appropriate analogy is out of consciousness here in the U.S., while the facts are consigned to the "abuse of reality" that the naïve call "history."

It should also be recalled that Bush did not declare the "war on terror," he re-declared it. Twenty years earlier, President Reagan's administration came into office declaring that a centerpiece of its foreign policy would be a war on terror, "the plague of the modern age" and "a return to barbarism in our time" -- to sample the fevered rhetoric of the day.

That first U.S. war on terror has also been deleted from historical consciousness, because the outcome cannot readily be incorporated into the canon: hundreds of thousands slaughtered in the ruined countries of Central America and many more elsewhere, among them an estimated 1.5 million dead in the terrorist wars sponsored in neighboring countries by Reagan's favored ally, apartheid South Africa, which had to defend itself from Nelson Mandela's African National Congress (ANC), one of the world's "more notorious terrorist groups," as Washington determined in 1988. In fairness, it should be added that, 20 years later, Congress voted to remove the ANC from the list of terrorist organizations, so that Mandela is now, at last, able to enter the U.S. without obtaining a waiver from the government.

The reigning doctrine of the country is sometimes called "American exceptionalism." It is nothing of the sort. It is probably close to a universal habit among imperial powers. France was hailing its "civilizing mission" in its colonies, while the French Minister of War called for "exterminating the indigenous population" of Algeria. Britain's nobility was a "novelty in the world," John Stuart Mill declared, while urging that this angelic power delay no longer in completing its liberation of India.

Similarly, there is no reason to doubt the sincerity of Japanese militarists in the 1930s, who were bringing an "earthly paradise" to China under benign Japanese tutelage, as they carried out the rape of Nanking and their "burn all, loot all, kill all" campaigns in rural North China. History is replete with similar glorious episodes.

As long as such "exceptionalist" theses remain firmly implanted, however, the occasional revelations of the "abuse of history" often backfire, serving only to efface terrible crimes. The My Lai massacre was a mere footnote to the vastly greater atrocities of the post-Tet pacification programs, ignored while indignation in this country was largely focused on this single crime.

Watergate was doubtless criminal, but the furor over it displaced incomparably worse crimes at home and abroad, including the FBI-organized assassination of black organizer Fred Hampton as part of the infamous COINTELPRO repression, or the bombing of Cambodia, to mention just two egregious examples. Torture is hideous enough; the invasion of Iraq was a far worse crime. Quite commonly, selective atrocities have this function.

Historical amnesia is a dangerous phenomenon, not only because it undermines moral and intellectual integrity, but also because it lays the groundwork for crimes that still lie ahead.

MORE

;)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QbN0g8-zbdY

some classic music...brightman and Bocelli

the fake Gitmo recidivism rates AGAIN via New York Times. It's in LBN right now. I can't even believe it. It the 2000th 1st date already.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/21/us/politics/21gitmo.html?scp=6&sq=Guantanamo&st=cse

Pox on them all. :(

:)

rush into forgetfulness with a quickness and cloak it in nobility

:kick:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=389&topic_id=5682916&mesg_id=5682916

This keeps happening with the same results, so I'm guessing it's more of a matter of who posts an article versus the content of the article itself.

So I couldn't tell you. Who knows... Time of day of the post can make a difference. What else is going on that day. I have to admit I did not see your post and certainly would have k&r'd it if I did. I think in this case, the subject line I cribbed from Alternet was more provocative and caught people's attention.

But thanks for responding anyway :hi:

The American Way:In Defense of George W. Bush
by Chris Floyd

SNIP

Faced with prosecution for their admitted deeds, the principals of the Bush Administration would have only one defense: precedent. They would have to show that their actions had been accepted practice in American government for many, many years -- from the very beginning, in fact -- and had never been regarded as prosecutable offenses before. To imprison them now -- or even execute them -- for carrying on the standard policies and practices of bipartisan governance stretching back for generations would surely constitute cruel and unusual punishment. It would be selective prosecution. It would be nothing less than the "criminalization of political differences" -- for the historical record clearly shows that aggression and torture have always been treated in the American system as political implements, tools of political policy, and not as criminal matters.

Thus the Bush defense team would have to put forth a mountain of historical evidence, laying out in great detail the use of military aggression and torture (both directly and by client states under American direction, for American purposes) over the entire course of U.S. history. Naturally, they would focus most of their attention on the decades since World War II, as this would involve institutions, agencies -- and even some of the same people -- that serve as instruments of American policy and practice today; iIt would be easier, and more relevant, to show the continuity with their more immediate bipartisan predecessors. But the older historical material would also be important in setting out the long-established precedents and philosophies in which modern policies are rooted.

It is here that I would want to contribute to the defense. I would gladly act as a lowly researcher for them, sifting through the accumulation of historical fact and insightful analysis provided over the years by such noted writers as Howard Zinn, Noam Chomsky, Arthur Silber, Alfred McCoy, Richard Seymour, Fred Anderson and Andrew Clayton, and far too many more to mention. And beyond these overviews and works of synthesis, there are the innumerable, highly detailed articles, studies, monographs, and full-scale scholarly works produced by historians in every field of specialty: political, economic, legal, cultural, military, and so on.

A war crimes trial of George Bush, Dick Cheney and their chief minions would be a public spectacle of perhaps unprecedented scope. Millions of people all over the world would be riveted to it every day; the American public especially would be hanging on its every word. To mount such a defense, on such a powerful platform, would devastate the myth of American exceptionalism like nothing else imaginable. Horrific atrocity, brutal arrogance, deadly ignorance -- again, by both direct and collateral hand -- would all be brought into the glaring light. The principle of violent domination -- continuous, accepted, celebrated, legitimized, institutionalized -- would stand revealed as a core value, if not the core value, of the American way.

http://www.chris-floyd.com/component/content/article/3/1767-the-american-way-in-defense-of-george-w-bush.html

What a bunch of rot...you mean a spectacle like the spectacle the friggin' reich-wing republi'cons' waged against President Clinton with their infamous GOP Penis Posse prosecuting Clinton's sexual dalliance with Monica. The Rightwing Stooges have a lot of nerve to worry about any spectacle that Bush & Cheney may have to undergo. These international criminals should be held to public scorn and ridicule for attaching electric cables to the testicles of a POW or of cutting another's genitals dozens of times to elicit some sort of confession certain to be bogus. If the same "enhanced techniques" were applied to either of these two chickenhawks they'd be confessing to the killing of Lindberg's baby.
I say prosecute both of these two psychopaths and their henchmen before the Hague and let the chips fall where they might. Bush & Cheney have destroyed our national prestige the world over and made this country less safe. I am sick to death of spineless twit wordsmiths writing sappy prose in defense of rogues of state!

Arrest them, Try them, and Hang them!!! That is one spectacle that would advance the Rule of Law and restore sanity to the world stage. Vaya con Dios Suckas' this is no time to be wimping out and taking "criminal prosecution off the table!

and quite a scary scenario he has described of what could have happened but that last line is pure gold. I admit I tend to gravitate towards Hissyspit's post..and kpete's. They just catch my eye and I know there is going to be meat when I get there...but do look for topics as well that sound interesting. Anyway..good article.

It started out 'local'. Then by the time * was in office it was a full-blown 'Global' War on Terror.

"I do not recall" motto of the Bush DoJ.

in one of his Mr. Eloquent speeches. Just look at this folks. Chomsky's stuff is irrefutable. The shit happened and all we get are these pacify platitudes from the White House about the nature of this country's problems while they continue the Bush agenda.

K & R

Working or Laid Off Americans! :banghead:

We are drowning in our own self-deception.

I remember when I had just returned from Vietnam. I went to visit my old high school one afternoon and ended up giving one of my favorite teachers a ride home. She told me how good it was to see me and how proud she was of what I had done by serving our country. During the ride, this wonderful, bright, inspiring woman commented on how outrageous it was that our government was going to try those soldiers for that awful MyLai incident. "I don't believe any of it" she said.

When I told her that I had seen things that were not so different from that horror except in the magnitude of the events, she physically recoiled, looked me straight in the eyes, and said, "I can't believe that American boys would EVER do anything like that."

We rode to her home in silence, where she politely, but painfully, thanked me for the ride then went inside. She could not even conceive of an American being anything other than a knight in shining armor. And I had shattered her lifelong illusion with one simple statement of fact.

The good German citizens would never have believed what was going on in their midst, even though they just didn't want to know. The 'our boys' syndrome has played out a hundred thousand times on this planet, with the same result each time. The dead are buried, the victor writes down what happened, and the whole thing is forgotten until the fever for war hits again.

have been developing and honing for millenia so we can raise armies to protect our families and societies and territory. Our species is so aggressive that history teaches us that we cannot live in peace for very long. The strong tribes, nations, allied groups cannot resist the drive to subjugate those who are different, or who possess what they want.

I'm sure there's some biological drive there that should free us all from our guilt feelings about waging warfare, but those who have been in them generally feel the guilt anyway. Of course, the ones who benefit most from the warfare rarely display any guilt or remorse, or even a desire to resort to less aggressive ways.

What was it somebody called us? The killer apes?