The United States has repeatedly used chemical weapons, including against its own people. Will we act?
U.S. to Attack U.S. over Chemical Weapons
Ted Rall
Ted Rall is a syndicated political cartoonist for Andrews McMeel Syndication, WhoWhatWhy.org and Counterpoint. He is a frequent contributor to The Wall Street Journal, a graphic novelist and author of many books of art and prose, and an occasional war correspondent. He is, recently, the author of the graphic novel "The Stringer."
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They’re gonna show those Abu Ghraib photos at our Nuremberg. Dorme bene.
Whatever happened to that jerk at U.C. Davis? Was he ever “brought to justice”?
Nothing ever happened to him.
I’m sure the Senate will agree, but I’m a bit worried about the House….
Henri
What the heck ever happened to calm, measured hope and change Barry Obama? He has done gone berserk! He’s completely forgotten history and is hoping that no one can remember anything except his revised versions. It seems that he cannot accept the fact that some people be knowing the real facts, and instead, be diss’ing him! All he ever wanted is to be known as the first black president that was calm, measured, and statesman-like, but now he is extremely agitated that so many people know him to be a liar and an asshole! When things don’t go his way, the jerk shows his true colors. And he was the best choice out of what was offered at the last election?
derlehrer: No. There was no reprisal.
Obama hasn’t changed. As many cartoonists, especially Tom Tomorrow, have pointed out, citizens projected their desires onto Obama. It was done with such intensity that those who had any realistic views on the matter were demonized. (See also: War, Iraq.) Tribalism trumps all. If you had watched the 2004 Democratic Caucus, with the proper mindset, you would have predicted the current turn of events.
Yup – I get you Ted, and I voted for Obama. I didn’t want to see Romney take the saddle. I had a bit of hope that Obama might finally follow through on some of what he promised, but he hasn’t done much but try to promote himself, and now he has shown his true colors. He’s willing to kill and maim to maintain his “credibility”, which he has just tried to fob off on the rest of the world. He’s another smart, intelligent sociopath that wants to maintain his status at the expense of human lives. I could say more, but I’m sure the others on this blog will say it for me.
I hate to nitpick, since I agree with the main point, but DU really isn’t a chemical weapon. The property that recommends it as a weapon is its density. It IS very poisonous, like any heavy metal (lead, cadmium, mercury, etc). It is LESS radioactive than naturally occurring uranium.
Russell: On the contrary, DU is effective because it ignites inside the target vehicle and slaughters the occupants, even if it does little damage to the target vehicle itself, and leaves a carcinogeneous legacy afterwards that does tremendous harm to the civilian population afterwards. Radioactive harm is generally termed chemical — the point is literally academic, but what other term would apply? No one uses the term “electromagnetic weapons” for radioactive weapons.
DU is notorious for its after-battle effects, and as the after-battle effects are chemical, it is a chemical weapon. The fact that it is less radioactive than naturally-occurring uranium is irrelevant, since naturally-occuring uranium isn’t a standard of weapon toxicity; plenty of things can make you sick and dead that have nowhere near the make-you-sick-and-dead-power of naturally-occuring uranium, and many of those things (say, cluster bombs and profligate use of mines) are considered straight-up war crimes.
What makes a chemical weapon a chemical weapon is toxicity. Toxicity is the intent of using it. While all weapons rely on chemistry to some extent, to me depleted uranium and Agent Orange clearly qualified as chemical weapons since they are and were knowingly used with full awareness of their toxicity against humans.
A little history: After WWII, the US thought the USSR was GREAT. First, as a friend, and then as a necessary enemy to prevent a return to the Depression.
US foreign policy was based on Monroe: keep the puppets corrupt and weak, with only small arms, so, if they ever pose a threat to US property interests, the US Marines can go in, depose them, and put in a new and improved puppet with minimal loss of US lives. So the US thought they’d agreed to split Korea with the USSR, and made sure that South Korea had no weapons except for limited small arms that only the US puppet dictator had. The USSR, in clear violation of international law, gave North Korea obsolescent WWII tanks. With South Korean troops (native and US) having only small arms to resist, the North Koreans quickly overran all of South Korea. The USSR had left the UN in a snit, so Truman got a UN resolution to send UN (mostly US) troops to re-take South Korea. Given the US treaty with the UN, the UN resolution was taken as full authorisation for the war against North Korea: no need for a Declaration of War, the Treaty with the UN (approved by the Senate) was enough.
Then Vietnam. No UN resolution, but a Congressional resolution based on Gulf of Tonkin lies. Followed by the ignominious defeat of US forces.
Skip a few wars. Bush, Jr told enough lies to get a UN resolution and Congress to (more or less) buy into an Iraq War. And the rwnj say that, at least Bush, jr got the resolutions, Obama didn’t bother in Libya. And Obama says he need not bother in Syria, but he’s bothering anyway.
And, as in Vietnam and Iraq, based on lies. Kerry is clearly lying (body language, contradictions, etc.) when he says there is irrefutable proof of the crimes of the Syrian regime, but most Americans accept his lies, as long as the intervention will be massive cruise missile strikes that decapitate Syria but don’t endanger a single American life.
A Syrian archbishop asked that America leave the current regime in place, since the current regime isn’t determined to purge all infidels from Syria.
But the Saudis, loyal US allies, say that the US must support the Wahabbis who are determined to cleanse Syria of all infidels (meaning everyone who isn’t a Wahabbi), and Obama has agreed (baksheesh????).
And Israel also wants to eradicate all functional government from Syria.
So what else can Obama do?
So many excellent points! Where to begin?
1. DU. When the Russians left Afghanistan, after burying all those landmines, the attitude was, “Yeah, we lost the war, but our mines will be maiming your kids for years and years to come.” The use of depleted uranium brings this to mind as well. It’s not so much “Golly, we need to stop that tank” as much as it’s “Heyyyyyy, if we use this DU stuff, we’ll give them deformed kids for years to come.”
When you get right down to it, if you want to teach people to be afraid of you, you don’t bother with the “send him to the hospital” phase. You send him to the morgue. And you don’t send an open-casket body, either. Very few people have Emmett Till’s mother’s ability to see through to the long-term goal and demand on open-casket viewing so that everyone can see what was done. (When was the last time the press showed photos of Hiroshima victims? Or any victims of such things? It’s always “We have to be respectful of our readership’s sensibilities.”) Shameless plug: “Barefoot Gen,” a graphic novel series on the bombings of Japan. Very 1950s-ish anime. Uneven, but overall, very good.
2. Ever notice all these wars are in the middle of nowhere? Apologies to Syria, South Korea, etc., but come on, the question was always “Is Paris burning?” not “How’s Damascus doing?” There’s a handful of cities that–on the global scale–matter as centers of economics, commerce, justice, politics, culture, etc. I think if we started having more wars in those places, we might see better solutions presented.
3. As to former Lt. John Pike, mace-wielder extraordinaire, he was fired. He’s appealing a verdict for worker’s compensation. I realize that, were you or I to start casually macing people, we’d be looking at time in prison, but he was fired from UC Davis. And with the Internet, he has two choices: become the model employee or risk losing his job every time someone doesn’t like his attitude.
4. For rikster, as I said on a bunch of occasions, I wanted Romney to win. I now call this the George Washington’s Cold theory of political situations. When Washington caught a cold, his doctor bled him. This so weakened him that he got worse, the cold became pneumonia, and he died. If Washington’s doctor had just given him something to help him sleep, or if Washington hadn’t gone to his doctor in the first place, George would probably have lived. Obama’s “success” is mostly from doing little. Or doing something commonsense (example: in time of huge unemployment, increase the length of time people get unemployment). You don’t need a committee or a Harvard degree to figure out that someone out on the street is a much bigger drain on the economy than someone who is getting a subsistence check.
Romney never would have been able to just “leave it alone.” He’d have gone in there bleeding this, bleeding that, bleeding the other. The entire economy would have collapsed. When one person’s house burns down every four months, people don’t really worry. If a whole block burns down in a night, holy hell, you’ll see people screaming for more fire stations.
5. I see the workforce capacity figure (percentage of total workforce that IS working) dropped again. I wonder how low it can actually drop. I mean, at what point does the whole remainder simply grind to a halt? 45% 23%? Anyone have any ideas?
alex is right about Romney. We had our shot in the Dem. primary of 2008 and faux-libs blew it. It’ll be years before the mainstream presents an opening like that again.
Empires do not see violence break out in their own cities unless there’s colossal mismanagement (e.g., the aristocracy takes too much and the propaganda breaks down) or the satellites resist — which is basically the same thing since, in the latter case, there’s less pillage to go around and the aristocracy fails to dial back its cut. As such, Paris, New York, and London aren’t likely to go up in flames any time soon. The rage is there, but people are in the wrong tribes and, as such, cannot organize into a decent mob, even less a revolt.
Re: Lt. John Pike and the pepper-spray incident
I did a little research today. Although he was (rightfully terminated) it took almost a year, during which time he enjoyed paid leave. I also learned that he emptied his canister and called for a second cop, who also blasted the protesters. The university settled for $30,000 each for the victims. Any idea who pays this?
And Pike has the audacity to claim his actions were justified in the performance of his duties? And files for unemployment compensation?
According to California law (which I also discovered in my research) he should be incarcerated and subject to $1,000 fine (for each offense).
God, what has happened to this country?