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CounterPunch
November
1, 2002
American
Journal
Blowback,
Wellstone, and Hitchens
by ALEXANDER COCKBURN
From Howard
Unruh to John Muhammad
A nation always on the war path means a nation
always under arms, a nation to which war is always coming home.
A minority of these homecomers arrive in the form of psychically
maimed people, violence-prone drunks, domestic abusers, drug
addicts, basket cases. This summer, before Muhammad and Malvo
embarked on their lethal jaunts, the whole issue of of blowback,
of wars Coming Home had turned red hot with the murders and suicides
in North Carolina's Fort Bragg, a vast military base and home
to the elite Special Forces.
On June 11 Sgt. Rigoberto Nieves, 32,
of the 3rd Special Forces Group, shot his 28-year-old wife, Teresa,
and then himself, in their bedroom, as Teresa's sister and other
relatives sat downstairs. He had returned from Afghanistan two
days earlier, having requested leave to resolve "personal
issues."
On June 29 Jennifer Wright was strangled
by her husband, William. The 36-year-old Green Beret confessed
to the killing three weeks later.
On July 9 Sgt. Cedric Griffin, 28, of
the 37th Engineer Battalion at Fort Bragg, was arrested after
stabbing his wife, Marilyn, more than fifty times before setting
her body on fire. The couple had been married for eight years
but had recently separated.
Sgt. Brandon Floyd was a member of the
Delta Force, a champion triathlete. He'd just come back from
Afghanistan. On July 19, amid a domestic quarrel, Floyd shot
his wife, Andrea, in the head. Then he put the barrel inside
his mouth and blew the top of his head off.
On July 23 in Fayetteville, the support
town for Fort Bragg, Joan Shannon killed her husband, Maj. David
Shannon, part of the Special Operations Command. The 40-year-old
was shot in the head and chest while sleeping in his bed.
A common theme of the few good news stories
on this issue cites wives complaining of the great difficulty
in getting any help in dealing with a violent, maybe homicidal,
husband. Analisa Nazareno had a harrowing account this month
in the San Antonio Express-News about Rhonda Pion, terrified
of her husband, legally blind and therefore unable to drive away
from Fort Sam Houston, an army base there. Rules required that
Pion seek permission from her husband's commanding officer to
get a protective order from the military judge advocate general's
office. As one victim's advocate said, "It's like having
to go to your father-in-law and asking him for permission to
protect yourself from his son." Ultimately Pion fled to
a relative in Louisiana.
Maj. Gen. Robert Clark is having trouble
getting his third star because he's accused of not doing enough
to deal with domestic and antigay violence when he was commanding
officer at Fort Campbell, in Kentucky. In 1999 Pvt. Barry Winchell
was beaten to death there. In addition to Winchell's murder,
there were four homicides related to domestic violence while
Clark was in charge. Kathy Spence, the mother of one victim,
LaRonda Spence, said her daughter complained at least thirty
times to her husband's superiors about his abuse, but they did
nothing. "How can you promote someone who is supposed to
protect the country when they can't even protect our daughters?"
Spence asked Ron Martz, a reporter from the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
Congress established a Defense Department
task force in 1999 after findings showed that the rate of domestic
violence in the military had risen by more than a third, to 25.6
per 1,000 soldiers in 1996 from 18.6 per 1,000 in 1990. At the
time, domestic violence rates were dropping among the general
population. In that six-year period there were 61,000 cases of
military spouses suffering domestic violence, five times higher
than the number in the civilian population. In the year 2000,
12,068 cases of spousal abuse were reported to the military's
Family Advocacy Program. There were eight deaths that year-all
women, and all involving domestic violence.
The military is desperate to bury the
stats, but it's clear that most abusers get away with it. Special
Forces soldiers, at hairtrigger readiness to kill, can be away
for up to ten months a year. A Green Beret with five to seven
years' experience earns $25,000. Each partner in this financially
stressed duo worries, often with reason, that the other is fooling
around.
The two best recent stories on the Fort
Bragg killings have, maybe unsurprisingly, appeared outside this
country, which most recently hosted a bland piece of Army PR
in USA Today, by Dave Moniz. Tim Reid, always a good reporter,
had a fine piece in the London Times, as did Doug Saunders in
the Toronto Globe and Mail.
Saunders quotes David Grossman, a former
US military psychologist who helped develop programs to make
new recruits more effective killers, to increase what's called
the "trigger-pull ratio." These programs are now part
of basic training. Grossman says that the trick is to break down
the natural human aversion to killing. He calls this "disengagement."
Once this aversion has been removed, it never comes back, and
can make it easier for former soldiers to become murderers. "The
ability to watch a human being's head explode and to do it again
and again-that takes a kind of desensitization to human suffering
that has to be learned," Grossman said.
So don't blame Charlton Heston. The US
military is the chief sponsor of violence in this country. One
day in 1949 Howard Unruh, a 28-year-old World War II veteran,
shot thirteen of his New Jersey neighbors. His famous line was,
"I'd have killed a thousand if I'd had enough bullets."
His military firearms training made his "walk of death"
the first modern serial-killer case.
From Unruh to Muhammad. Millions have
been molded in this manner. Blowback is the consequence. It will
be with us as long as the Empire needs war as its guarantor.
America is living in the blowback years. What goes around comes
around, with unforeseen consequences, or consequences foreseen
but discounted. Unleash the mujahedeen on the Soviets in Afghanistan,
and you get Osama bin Laden.
Blowback usually comes as a shock, because the art of politics
is to separate actions from consequences.
Writing About
Wellstone
Earlier this year we published Jeff Taylor's
excellent article on Paul Wellstone's political performance.
After Wellstone's death, Taylor suggested to CounterPunch's editors
that perhaps the article, which was critical of Wellstone, should
be taken off the CounterPunch site on the grounds that it might
seem tasteless amid the mourning for the senator and his family.
Jeffrey St. Clair and I felt that there
was no need to take the article down, and that visitors to our
site are capable of understanding that a thoughtful assessment
written months ago did not imply ghoulish intent to dance on
Wellstone's grave. We told Jeff as much. Here's his final considered
response.
"After thinking about it for a few
days (and watching the politically-motivated hagiography wheels
turn), I think the essay should remain. I still believe everything
I wrote. It's full of truths, even if they're inconvenient or
painful. add an author's note , as follows: This essay was written
in June 2002, four months before Senator Wellstone and seven
others died in a tragic plane crash. My differences with Wellstone
were political, not personal. I used to be a great admirer of
Wellstone the politician. He gained my long-distance support
in 1990 when he led opposition to the Gulf War and I voted for
him in 1996 when I moved to Minnesota. A year after that, I was
an early Wellstone-for-President booster.
"Over time, I became disillusioned
and my article reflects that fact. It's easier to romanticize
a politician when you don't know so much about him or her. Since
his death, I've been getting hate mail from Wellstone worshippers
and gleeful mail from Wellstone haters. The latter tendency is
sick and evil. The former is deluded and irrational. Should powerful
politicians be exempt from criticism because they might someday
die a premature death? I think it's also wrong that some are
willing to exploit personal tragedies to score political points.
Despite the sad way his life ended, the strengths and weaknesses
of Wellstone's career stand on their own, are instructive, and
are subject to discussion.
"P.S.--Wellstone's replacement in
the Senate race, Walter Mondale, has all of Wellstone's vices
and none of Wellstone's virtues. Thanks for posting my essay
in the first place and for considering this request. CounterPunch
remains a true public service. Thanks, Jeff Taylor."
Talking of
Hitchens
This just in from Bill Blum, author of
the invaluable "Rogue State: A Guide to the World's Only
Superpower":
"I hadn't planned on publicizing
the following exchange of emails I had with Christopher Hitchens,
but inasmuch as he reneged on his promise and continues to write
the same dribble, I am submitting it to the world's judgment.
October 20, 2002 "Dear Mr. Hitchens,
I've followed your support for the American Empire's newest bombing
hysteria, but I have failed to hear from you any kind of response
to the most important question: Do you support, once again, the
dropping of large quantities of highly lethal explosives upon
the heads of countless innocent men, women and children, destroying
their homes, their schools, their hospitals, their lives, their
futures? If you can't deal with this question, but instead continue
to content yourself with snapping at the heels of the left with
irrelevant, esoteric, and (hopefully) droll side issues, then
I would say that you are guilty of serious character failure
and are engaging in nothing less than intellectual masturbation.
Sincerely, Bill Blum."
October 21, 2002 "If you consider
that a properly phrased question, or would publish it as such
under your own name, then I am willing to reply to it. But I
will, for now and for your sake, consider it confidential. Do
you feel like having another try? CH."
October 21, 2002 "If you can get
it published and reply to it, that would suit me fine. Bill Blum."
"That", Blum writes, "was
the last I heard from Hitchens. My analysis is this: He was unable
to respond in substance to the question I challenged him with
and so he thought that he'd try intimidation instead, on the
premise, apparently, that I would be embarrassed to see my email
publicized. Why would he have thought I'd be embarrassed? Because
I used the word "masturbation"? If not that, I can't
imagine."
And Talking
of Blum and Hitchens
This also just in from Adam Engel, a
New York-based CounterPuncher, who had asked us whether we thought
Wellstone had been assassinated. We told him No, we didn't think
so, and he answered thus:
"I didn't think so, but A) I just
finished reading Bill Blum's "Killing Hope," which,
along with your and JSC's "White Out" would make even
the late great William Burroughs quake in his boots (and is chock
full of plane-crash assassinations), and B) though I'm a "stop-light"
Green (If I can't vote Red, I'll vote Green, but NEVER Yellow),
I did argue fervently to fellow de facto Greens that Wellstone
was no Al Gore.
"By the way, I followed your brief
exchange with Sam Smith regarding Hitchens. Why are so many writers/scholars/editors
that I respect and admire, including, among others, Chomsky,
Herman, Solomon, Pilger, Albert, Ehrenreich, Fisk, Sam Smith,
Cockburn, St Clair, and so many others wasting valuable time,
talking and writing about Christopher Hitchens? Even when he
was a 'good-guy' I never saw him as anything but Hunter Thompson
in a White Hat--an arrogant, foppish, chain-smoking, self-promoting
boozer. At least Thompson never pretended to be anything other
than a self-serving asshole. The world's on fire, yet so much
print/screen space has been wasted merely because this wanna-be
Norman Mailer opted for a bigger paycheck and better health insurance
or whatever the Corporate Media gave him. He's a piece of snot
that doesn't even deserve the dignity of a decent Kleenex burial,
but should be flicked furtively to the rug or wiped under the
couch when no one's looking...yet, he's treated like news. Je
ne comprend pas."
Yesterday's
Features
Paul de Rooij
Amnesty
International & Israel: Say it isn't so!
Jeffrey St. Clair
Gag the
Messenger, Kill the Fish
Ben Tripp
Fourth Estate for Sale: Unfurnished
Neve Gordon
Yigal
Bronner's Rights Violated by IDF
Kurt Nimmo
The Delusions of David Horowitz
Desiree Hellegers and
Laurie Mercier
Red Squads
Redux:
Portland Activists Mobilize Against the FBI's Joint Terrorism
Task Force
Anis Shivani
Anthropologists on Wall Street
Anthony Gancarski
All's
Well That Ends Wells:
Parching the Palestinians
Lee Sustar
Report from the Docks:
This Is Union Busting!
New
Print Edition of CounterPunch Available Exclusively
to Subscribers:
- The Shafts of Death: Bush, Coal Mines, and Death
in the Tunnels;
- Speak Memory!: Carter and the Draft;
- Daniel Pipes' World: Smearing Pro-Arab Academics;
- Ashcroft's Gays: the War on Free Speech;
- Saddam's Amnesty: Could It Happen Here?
- Criminalizing Dissent: a history and preview;
- Iraq 1987: When the Going Was Good;
- Egypt in Turmoil: an Anthropologist's Account;
- Green and Grounded: Profiled at the Gate.
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October 26
/ 27, 2002
Michael Wolff
A Place
of Tears
Ilija Trojanow
Bali Mon Amour
Ben Tripp
Crocodile Tears
Hope Shand and Silvia Ribeiro
The Great Containment:
GM Fallout from Mexico to Zambia
M. Junaid
Alam
The Wolf Who Cried Wolf:
Charging Anti-Semitism & Extending the Iron Wall
Gavin Keeney
The Fusion Thing:
Landscape + Architecture
Adam Engel
A Good Man is Hard to Misfit
Anis Shivani
Is America Becoming Fascist?
Jason Leopold
Is Thomas White Fit to Lead the Army?
Philip Farruggio
Let Them Eat (Crumb) Cake
Josh Frank
The Grassroots of Hope
Anthony Gancarski
Concerned Citizen: episode 5
Night School
M. Shahid
Alam
The Civilizing Mission
October 25, 2002
Wayne Madsen
Pappy
Bush on Wellstone:
"Who Is This Chickenshit?"
Stuart Timmons
Harry
Hay Dead at 90:
He Paved the Way for Modern Gay Activism
Vanessa Jones
Australia
Votes Green:
Historic No Vote to US War Plans
Ben Terrall
Rep.
Tom Lantos' Big Lie
Ismael Hossein-Zadeh
Behind
the Drive for War:
The Escalating Bush Military Budget
Will Youmans
Israel's and Divestment
Norman Madarasz
Lula
on the Verge
October 24,
2002
Jo Freeman
How the
Christian Coalition Boosts Israel
Ben Tripp
George
W.: Caught Between Iraq and a Hard Place
Harry Browne
Ireland's Dreary Yes to Nice
Anis Shivani
A Guide
for the Perplexed:
the Major Countries of the World as Defined by the Office of
Strategic Influence
T.W. Croft
America's
New Improved War
William Hughes
A Free
Press, But for Whom?
Alan Farago
Jeb Bush and the Environment
October 23,
2002
Daniel Wolff
Pataki,
Witt and the Indian Point Nuke
Wayne Madsen
A Saudiless
Arabia
Sam Bahour
and Paul de Rooij
Abritrary
Imprisonment
Chris White
Why I Oppose
the US War on Terror:
an ex-Marine Sergeant Speaks Out
Anthony Gancarski
Back to Bali
Adam Engel
Twilight
(of the Idols) Zone
Robert Fisk
How to Shut Up Your Critics
October 22,
2002
Jack McCarthy
A Letter
to C. Hitchens
Carol Norris
This Message
Brought to You by Breast Cancer, Inc.
Joanne Mariner
Just
Say "Not Until We're Married":
Legislating Morality and Understanding HIV/AIDS Prevention
Kathleen Christison
Excuse Me?
How Israel Justifies Killing Palestinians
Linda Heard
Iraq War
Mongering:
A Game of Chess with Lives at Stake
Roger Peacock
Marketing the War on Iraq
Resources:
100s of Links
About 9/11
CounterPunch:
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Coverage of 9/11 and Its Aftermath
Five
Days That
Shook The World:
Seattle and Beyond
By
Alexander Cockburn
and Jeffrey St. Clair
Photos by Allan Sekula
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Online at 20% Off Amazon.com's price!)
Read
Whiteout and Find Out
How the CIA's Backing of the Mujahideen Created the World's Most
Robust Heroin Market and Helped to Finance the Rise of the Taliban
and Osama bin Laden
Whiteout:
CIA, Drugs & the
Press
by Alexander
Cockburn
and Jeffrey St. Clair
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