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Today's
Stories
May
7, 2004
Robert
Fisk
An Illegal and Immoral War
Ron
Jacobs
UnAmerican? I Wish It Were So
May
6, 2004
Jeffrey
St. Clair
They Did It for Jessica: Smeared with
Shit; Kicked to Death
Kathy
Kelly
May Day in Pekin Prison: Prison Labor
for the War Machine
Werther
The Sunk Cost Fallacy: War as Vegas
Casino Game
Lawrence
Ferlinghetti
Totalitarian Democracy
Robert
Fisk
"Smoke Him": Video Shows Wounded
Men Being Shot by US Helicopter
John
Janney
Torturing the Way to Freedom?
Christopher
Ketcham
Outlaw Heterosexual Marriage Now!
Alan
Farago
Dead Oceans: So Long, Thanks for the Fish
Sam
Hamod
Bush on Arab TV: Worthless and Demeaning
James
Brooks
Sullen Spring
William
S. Lind
On the Brink of Defeat in Iraq
May
5, 2004
Maj.
Gen. Antonio M. Taguba
Complete US Army Report on Abuse of
Iraqi Prisoners
Kathleen
and Bill Christison
Kerry: a Lost Cause for Progressives?
Will
Youmans
Deal with the Devil: a Palestinian
Zionist and the End of the World
Patrick
B. Barr
Terrorists R Us: the Powerful are Exempt from the Label
Lawrence
Magnuson
Nightline's All-American Morgue
Greg
Moses
Pocketbook of Denuded Ideals
Niranjan
Ramakrishnan
Tormenting Prisoners, Torturing
Truth
Lee
Ballinger
Cinco de Mayo and Unity
Gilbert
Achcar
Bush's Cakewalk into the Iraq Quaqmire
Website
of the Day
Operation Phoenix & Iraq
May
4, 2004
Human
Rights Watch
A Timeline of Torture and Abuse Allegations
and Responses
Kurt
Nimmo
The CIA Privatized Torture
David
Peterson
CBS, Self-Censorship & Iraq
Barry
Lando
CACI's Private Torture Chambers
Patrick
Cockburn
Torture: Iraqis Disgusted, But Not Surprised
Dr.
Susan Block
Indecent Insurgents: Watch What You Say
Fidel
Castro
A Mindless, Unnecessary War
Mike
Whitney
Empire of Torture
Sonali
Kolhatkar
How to Stop the War: Demonstrate Against
John Kerry
Josh
Frank
The Lost Sierra Club
Stan
Goff
The Role: Another Open Letter to US Troops in Iraq
Agustin
Velloso
Spare Us Your Disgusting Ethics
Stew
Albert
American Know-How
Website
of the Day
Scenes from a Cover-Up
May
3, 2004
Virginia
Tilley
Let the Wall of Silence Fall
May
1 / 2, 2004
Patrick
Cockburn
An Army in Disgrace, a Policy
in Tatters, the Real Prospect of Defeat
Robert
Fisk
"Good Guys" Who Can Do No
Wrong
Alexander
Cockburn
Watching Niagara: Stupid Leaders,
Useless Spies, Angry World
Heather
Williams
Gringo, We're Going Home: Latin
American Troops Flee Iraq
Diane
Rejman
An Army Vet on Torture in Iraq:
Abu Ghraib as My Lai?
Diane
Christian
Blood Spilling: Osama, Bush and
Sharon Speak the Same Language
Patrick
Cockburn
Seems Like Old Times in Fallujah
Dave
Lindorff
Bush's Torturous Logic: Shocked,
Shocked, Shocked
Chris
Floyd
Suicide Bomber: Neocons, Nihilists
and Annihilation
April
29 / 30, 2004
Dave
Zirin
A Pawn in Their Game: the Unlonesome
Death of Pat Tillman
Kathy
Kelly
The Warden's Tour
Greg
Weiher
Fallujah and the Warsaw Ghetto: the
Banality of Evil
Michael
S. Ladah
Terrorism and Assassination: the
Ultimate Depception
Patrick
Cockburn
The Fallujah Mutinies
April
28, 2004
Christopher
Brauchli
Meet Congressman Know-Nothing:
Tom Tancredo
Wendy
Brinker
The Politics of the Numb
Faisal
Kutty
The Dirty Work of Canadian Intelligence
John
Chuckman
Seeking the Evil One
Mike
Whitney
Flag-Draped Coffins and the Seattle Times
Tom
Mountain
Rwanda and the F***** Word
Graeme
Greenback
The Iraqi Alamo: a CNN/CIA Production
Tracy
McLellan
The War Comes Home
M.
Junaid Alam
We are the Barbarians
William
Loren Katz
Iraq, the US and an Old Lesson
April 27, 2004
James
Davis
The Colombia 3 Acquitted
Dave
Lindorff
Chalabi as Prosecutor
Bruce
Schneier
Terrorist Threats and Political
Gain
Cockburn
/ Sengupta
British Generals Resist Calls for
More Troops to Aid Americans in Iraq
Walt
Brasch
Presidential Letters: The Day I
Was Asked to Feed an Elephant
Saul
Landau
The Empire in Denial and the Denial
of Empire
April 26, 2004
Patrick
Cockburn
Crossing the Shia Line: US Troops
Prepare to Enter Najaf
Wayne
Madsen
Trading Places: Will the US Go the Way of the USSR?
Grover
Furr
Protest, Rebellion, Commitment
Elaine
Cassel
Lies About the Patriot Act
Mickey
Z.
Inspired by Pat Tillman?
Greg
Moses
Bremer's De-De-Ba'athjfication Gambit
Gila
Svirsky
Anarchy in Our Souls
Uri
Avnery
Vanunu and the Terrible Secret
April 24 / 25, 2004
William
A. Cook
Tweedledee and Tweedledum: Kerry
and Bush Melt into One
Jeffrey
St. Clair
Stryking Out: a General, GM and the Army's Latest Tank
Brandy
Baker
A Revitalized Women's Movement? Let's Hope So
Robert
Fisk
A Warning to Those Who Dare Criticize Israel in the Land of Free
Speech
Ben
Tripp
October Surmise: a Case of Worst Scenarios
Nelson
Valdés
"Submit or Die": Iraq and the American Borg
Lucson
Pierre-Charles
Haiti's Return to the Future
Kurt
Nimmo
The CIA Killed Pat Tillman
Mark
Scaramella
Does Anybody Know Anything?
Patrick
Cockburn
The Return of Saddam's Generals
Gary
Engler
Welcome to La Paz: a Vacation in Tear Gas
Col.
Dan Smith
Whistling in the Dark: Israel, Palestine and Bush
Greg
Weiher
Iraq is Utterly Unlike Vietnam...
Elaine
Cassel
Life on the Outside: a Review
Vanessa
Jones
Letter from Australia: Why an Independent Won Sydney
Jim
French
Agriculture's Bullied Market
Hammond
Guthrie
Al Aronowitz, Bob Dylan and The Beatles
Poets'
Basement
Jones, Holt, Albert, LaMorticella
April 23, 2004
Ron
Jacobs
The Only Solution is Immediate Withdrawal
Dave
Lindorff
Imagination Deficit Disorder
Mokhiber
/ Weissman
Contractors and Mercenaries: the Rising Corporate Military Monster
Norman
Solomon
Country Joe Band, 2004: "What Are We Fighting For?"
Cynthia
McKinney
All Things Are Not Equal: the Perils of Globalization
CounterPunch
Wire
A Bitch Called Wanda
Karyn
Strickler
Sierra Club, Inc.
Hammond
Guthrie
Yellow Caked in the Face
Paul
de Rooij
Graveyard of Justifications: Glossary
of the Iraqi Occupation
April 22, 2004
Patrick
Cockburn
When Terror Came to Basra: "I
Saw a Minibus of Children on Fire"
Tanya
Reinhart
The Wall Behind Disengagement
Lance
Selfa
Why is Kucinich Still in the Race?
Josh
Frank
Street Fighting Man? Kucinich's Pulled Punches
Sen.
Robert Byrd
Bush Owes America Answers on Iraq
William
S. Lind
Why We Get It Wrong
Mickey
Z.
Undoing the Latches
Robert
Jensen
Why They Fast: Remembering the Victims of the World Bank
John
L. Hess
The New York Times from 30,000 Feet
April
21, 2004
Gary
Leupp
Yeats on Iraq
Alfredo
Castro
Colombia's Forgotten Prisoners
Dr.
Susan Block
Bush's Taliban Drug Deal
William
A. Cook
George 1 to George 2
Jack
Random
Iraq and Vietnam
Jean-Guy
Allard
Alarcon Meets the Editors
Mike
Whitney
Charade in the Desert
Bill
Christison
Only Major Policies Changes Can
Help Washington Now
April 20, 2004
Dave
Lindorff
Bush and Kerry Share a Problem
Stan
Cox
Wal-Mart's Magic Numbers
Bruce
Anderson
On Listening to Air America
Joseph
Kalvoda
Czech Mate for Condi
Greg
Moses
Yesterday's Intelligence
Stan
Goff
The Democrats and Iraq
Website
of the Day
Santorum Happens
April 19, 2004
Kurt
Nimmo
The "Central Hand" of the
Resistance
Mike
Whitney
Bob Woodward's Imperial Trifles
Douglas
Valentine
52 Pick-Up and the 100-to-1
Rule
John
Chuckman
The Sharon Annex: Evil Does Often
Triumph
Doug
Giebel
Welcome to the Club
Rahul
Mahajan
Hospital Closings and War Crimes
April
16 / 18, 2004
Robert
Fisk
Bush Legitimizes Terror
Saul
Landau
Subverting Brazil and Cuba
Dave
Lindorff
Paying for War: $2,150 per Family
and Counting
Brandy
Baker
Fallujah's Collateral Damage
Mickey
Z.
The Left Attacks from the Right
Bruce
Jackson
The Bush Press Conference: Gott Mit
Uns
Norman
Solomon
How the "NewsHour" Changed
History
Alexander
Cockburn
Bush, Kerry and Empire
April
15, 2004
Greg
Moses
Follow the Families, Not the Script
Virginia
Tilley
The Carnage According to Gen. Kimmitt:
Just Change the Channel
Ron
Jacobs
They Coulda Been Champions of the
World: Hurricane Carter and Ron Kovic
Michael
Neumann
A Happy Compromise: Hate Crimes
Reporting in the Toronto Globe and Mail
April
14, 2004
Tom
Reeves
Return to Haiti: an American Learning
Zone
Reza
Fiyouzat
Japan and Iraq
Ron
Jacobs
What Bush Really Said
Diane
Christian
The Real Passion
Hot Stories
Alexander Cockburn
Behold,
the Head of a Neo-Con!
Subcomandante
Marcos
The
Death Train of the WTO
Norman Finkelstein
Hitchens
as Model Apostate
Steve Niva
Israel's
Assassination Policy: the Trigger for Suicide Bombings?
Dardagan,
Slobodo and Williams
CounterPunch Exclusive:
20,000 Wounded Iraqi Civilians
Steve
J.B.
Prison Bitch
Sheldon
Rampton and John Stauber
True Lies: the Use of Propaganda
in the Iraq War
Wendell
Berry
Small Destructions Add Up
CounterPunch
Wire
WMD: Who Said What When
Cindy
Corrie
A Mother's Day Talk: the Daughter
I Can't Hear From
Gore Vidal
The
Erosion of the American Dream
Francis Boyle
Impeach
Bush: A Draft Resolution
Click
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May
7, 2004
Is the Game
Over?
A Comic Apology
By M. SHAHID ALAM
"There's a lot of people
in the world who don't believe that people whose skin color may
not be the same as ours can be free and self-govern. I reject
that. I reject that strongly. I believe that people who practice
the Muslim faith can self-govern. I believe that people whose
skins aren't necessarily -- are a different color than white
can self-govern."
George Bush, April 30, 2004
[1]
This happens rarely--very rarely. An
apology from the President of the United States, not for personal
lapses, but for the rare slippage in the workings of America's
virtuous, divinely blessed, civilizing mission to the benighted
world.
Most Americans truly believe--take
this to be self-evident--that the United States is not only the
world's greatest country, but it has always been the last great
hope of earth, that Americans have always been willing, more
than any other Western power, to take on the White Man's burden,
to bring life, liberty and happiness to the rest of mankind.
This is a testament to the power of American media: that it can
claim to be the world's freest media and yet control--like no
other 'free' media--what an overwhelming majority of Americans
know and believe about their country. And what they know and
believe is America the free, pure and virtuous.
Day after day, the mandarins
and media in this country work tirelessly, cleverly, to project
an image of an America that protects freedoms at home and abroad;
an America that has time and again shed its blood to rid foreign
lands of murderous tyrannies; an America that cares, that responds
with alacrity to famines and calamities abroad; an American that
contributes men, money and ideas to bring prosperity to the backward
races; an America that has patiently served as an honest broker
in the dispute between Israelis and Palestinians.
As a result, year after year,
most Americans are kept in the dark, unaware of the actual,
the real America--the only kind seen by much of the rest
of the world. This is the America that daily employs its might
to mangle the lives of hundreds of millions, that pushes a globalization
that devastates the economies of the Third World, that instructs
and arms foreign tyrannies to terrorize their own people, that
aids and abets an Israeli machine that is determined to extirpate
the Palestinians. This America acts in the name of freedom, in
any way that it sees fit and necessary, to keep the world safe
for American capital. However, this dark side of America is nearly
completely, nearly always, whitewashed by the myth-making powers
of America's elites.
Occasionally, this myth-making machine will let slip a few snapshots
of the real, the actual America. In fact, such slippages are
functional; they serve to validate the trust of the duped and
faithful in our 'free' media. Generally, these revelations appear
long after the fact. They are also quickly explained away. Americans
are told that this is for their own good: they serve higher American
values. When they cannot be explained away, they are described
as unavoidable lapses, human failings of a few. These lapses
remind the faithful to be thankful that the system works well
nearly all the time. No apology is tendered. None is demanded.
Yet the matter of the torture
of Iraqi prisoners has quickly produced a storm of indignation
from the mandarins and the media. It has led to calls for investigations,
demands for the resignation of the Secretary of Defense, two
television appearances by the President before Arab audiences,
and, incredibly, even a feeble Presidential apology. In the words
of Scott McClellan, the White House Press Secretary, "The
President is sorry for what occurred and the pain it has caused."
I am assuming that the "pain"
in question is the one inflicted by Americans on the Iraqis,
as well as anyone who can feel the pain of the Iraqi victims.
Or is the President talking of America's pain over the actual,
the real America, now irrevocably, unforgettably, caught on camera?
For the history books. For posterity.
In any case, that's quite decent
for starters. Incredibly, the name of a sitting American President
has been linked to the subject of Arab pain, a pain that has
an acknowledged American provenance. It must be a first, for
any American President--perhaps, any Western leader. We
are speaking of the pain of the "natives"--inferior
sand niggers, in this case--the pain of whose miserable lives
could never earn our sympathy. We do not share in the pain of
the natives.
Has the President undergone
another conversion? If he has, and now, he, truly and sincerely,
feels the pain inflicted by a few Americans on their Iraqi victims,
will he follow up by acknowledging the Iraqis who were killed
and maimed to advance the interests of Zionists and Oil Corporations?
Will he also set up museums to commemorate the deaths of a million
and a half Iraqi civilians killed in a previous American war
that targeted their civilian infrastructure and followed it up
with death-dealing sanctions? Is it just possible that at last
the President will begin to recognize the Palestinians as humans,
and atone for the pain that he and his predecessors have inflicted
upon them for more than fifty years?
Apart from the faithful, no
one believes that the President's apology is sincere. In fact,
it looks comical--comical because it is based on false premises.
We are behaving as if the sexual humiliation of Iraqi prisoners
is the first outrage inflicted by the United States on
the Muslims. It is unlikely that the Muslims have forgotten,
or will soon forget, the hundred lacerations inflicted upon them
by America's conjugal embrace of the Israeli Occupation, by its
support for corrupt monarchies and dictatorships in the Islamicate
world, by the genocidal first Gulf War, by the strangulating
sanctions against Iraq that took the lives of three-quarters
of a million Iraqi children, and by the routine demonization
of Islam by preachers close to this White House. It is comical
when a tormentor inflicts a hundred wounds on his victim and
then starts apologizing for stepping on his toes.
The apology is comical because
the United States has hitherto acted on the premise that the
Arabs only respect a stout stick. This is the advice that the
Zionists have regularly dished out to their American pupils.
In part, this was the advice on which President Bush launched
his invasion of Iraq. Topple Saddam, the Arab strongman, and
all the Arabs will instantly acknowledge US-Israeli hegemony
as the greatest gift to them since the descent of the Qur'an.
So, isn't it a bit comical so soon after the invasion to come
apologizing to the Arabs? Actually, it is worse than comical.
It has to be stupid. It will surely be read by many Muslims--not
least, those who are in the Islamist resistance--as a sign of
weakness, an admission that America's belligerent approach isn't
paying off, that the world's only super power is afraid of Arab
outrage.
The President's apology is
also targeted at domestic audiences. The pictures of American
liberators sexually torturing Iraqis do not make the best commercials
for America's high civilizing mission. They might just undermine
America's faith in its civilizing mission, the principal ideological
prop for its formidable military machine. Some quick action was
necessary. Americans were assured that the cases of torture were
local, not systemic, and their perpetrators are being punished.
There was nothing to worry. America's civilizing mission could
not be derailed by the actions of a few rogue elements. It must
continue to march forward through the jungles, swamps and deserts
of the Third World, bringing freedom, hope and prosperity to
the inferior breeds who cannot yet manage their own affairs.
The civilizing mission is the sacred trust of the White Man.
Still, we must ask, if there
isn't an element of panic in the White House response to the
scandal of Iraqi prison torture. The whole administration is
apologizing, and doing so repeatedly, promptly and with little
urging from anyone. The sight of the United States--swaggering,
contemptuous of others, unilateralist--apologizing, somehow,
makes an eerie sight. Does this suggest that after all the damned
lies to cover for the war, after all the blustering as these
lies were exposed, this Administration is finally losing its
nerve, losing its cool? Could it be that they too know better
than what they put out? Could it be that they too fear that the
game they started in Iraq--at the cost of American and Iraqi
lives--is over?
References:
[1] George Will, "Time
for Bush to See The Realities of Iraq," Washington Post,
May 4, 2004).
M. Shahid Alam is professor of economics at Northeastern
University. His last book, Poverty from the Wealth of Nations,
was published by Palgrave in 2000. Visit his webpage at http://msalam.net.
© M. Shahid Alam
Weekend
Edition Features for April 24 / 25, 2004
William
A. Cook
Tweedledee and Tweedledum: Kerry
and Bush Melt into One
Jeffrey
St. Clair
Stryking Out: a General, GM and the Army's Latest Tank
Brandy
Baker
A Revitalized Women's Movement? Let's Hope So
Robert
Fisk
A Warning to Those Who Dare Criticize Israel in the Land of Free
Speech
Ben
Tripp
October Surmise: a Case of Worst Scenarios
Nelson
Valdés
"Submit or Die": Iraq and the American Borg
Lucson
Pierre-Charles
Haiti's Return to the Future
Kurt
Nimmo
The CIA Killed Pat Tillman
Mark
Scaramella
Does Anybody Know Anything?
Patrick
Cockburn
The Return of Saddam's Generals
Gary
Engler
Welcome to La Paz: a Vacation in Tear Gas
Col.
Dan Smith
Whistling in the Dark: Israel, Palestine and Bush
Greg
Weiher
Iraq is Utterly Unlike Vietnam...
Elaine
Cassel
Life on the Outside: a Review
Vanessa
Jones
Letter from Australia: Why an Independent Won Sydney
Jim
French
Agriculture's Bullied Market
Hammond
Guthrie
Al Aronowitz, Bob Dylan and The Beatles
Poets'
Basement
Jones, Holt, Albert, LaMorticella
|