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CounterPunch
September
3, 2002
America Strikes
Back
Lynchings, Zionists and the Occasional
Flag Tie
by Anthony Gancarski
Imagine a 2002 in an alternate universe. One where
there wasn't such a slavish devotion to symbols of belief --
flags, crosses, and such -- but there was more of a commitment
to understanding the message of Christ, or to understanding how
the world actually works. To understanding that violence begets
violence, and to understanding as well that the simplest way
to stop a serial gunfighter is to stop supplying him with bullets.
Of course, we don't live in that world.
We live in a world where schoolgirls are debased and sexualized,
a process that is normalized by ritual. We live in a world that
denies critical thinking and embraces tests standardized by those
who own all the land, the guns, and the gold. We live in a world
where bombing countries half a world away is seen, even by Ivy
League liberals, as merely cynical politics when they should
be considering it as the mass murder it is.
We live in a world where it is assumed
that killing as part of a professional military is a morally
justifiable act. It is taken as a given, by all parties, that
governments can dictate the terms of moral legitimacy, even though
there is occasional evidence that governments act in ways that
are less than moral. Even the educated among us blithely accept
that our so-called representatives can draw borders and pick
the governments for countries on any continent. Even after all
the diversity education forced down the gagging throats of the
masses, there is precious little suggestion that the culture
of 21st century America shouldn't be forced upon the world. The
underlying logic, of course, is that the world may not know how
good we are just yet, but perhaps they'd like to study the topic
at gunpoint.
Revisiting this alternate universe, just for a moment, let us
imagine that it wasn't possible to find one's self demonized
for recognizing the realities of a situation, or for standing
up and saying that perhaps there are better ways to establish
the US as a beacon of liberty than by turning the Holy Land into
a garrison state, whose leaders seem to equate toughness with
forfeiture of conscience. Imagine a world where it wasn't necessary
to have to remove someone like Cynthia McKinney from her position
for being too black -- that is, for understanding that the US
government is liable for its treatment of the Palestinians,
and for understanding that that same US government has proven
itself willing to silence or even exterminate marginalized groups
in the past by way of building a blessed "bipartisan consensus".
Other writers, such as Alexander Cockburn
on this very site, have written at some length about the details
of McKinney's removal. Perhaps my favorite detail of the entire
debacle -- the making of Denise Majette, dizzy from the Keyes
Presidential juggernaut of 2000, who undoubtedly will serve as
a reliable vote for the Homeland Security Wing of the Democratic
party -- was when Cynthia McKinney's father Billy was asked by
Fox News if he bore a special antipathy for Jews. McKinney, a
veteran of Georgia politics, replied that his quarrel wasn't
with Jews, per se, but with "Zionists." Without allowing
the reporter to interject, he asked her a question rarely heard
amidst the din of the international Cable News Conspiracy: "Are
you a Zionist?"
We can say with certainty that there
was no attempt to answer that question, at least not one worthy
of television time. The implication, of course, is that questions
like that are somehow beyond the pale, as if it is somehow intolerant
to wonder what a US client state is doing with the billions a
year it "appropriates" from the mouths of starving
children in Phoenix and Jacksonville and other catastrophes of
sprawl and decay. Neither of the McKinneys, in the end, followed
Ari Fleischer's advice to "watch what you say", and
the result was something along the lines of a "high-tech
lynching" courtesy of the expected lobbyists and their media
whores.
Ken Adelman remembers. Ken remembers when a shoeshine cost one
dollar and a haircut five. Ken remembers when unelectable foreign
policy whizzes didn't have to go on Washington Journal and be
upbraided by country black women, calling him out for sending
their sons and grandsons to die for "regime change",
as he sits there concerned less with the future body count than
with whether or not his US Flag necktie is on straight. It's
not for nothing that he worked for Don Rumsfeld back in the Ford
Administration. Nor is it a mystery that his recent high profile
means that he's running point for the expected operators.
Mr. Adelman, whose author bio suggests
that he has done nothing of note since the Reagan Administration,
graced the 8/29 London Times with a splash of summer fun entitled
"Desert Storm II Would Be A Walk in the Park." As the
title indicates, the piece is chockful of the kind of comic gems
one might expect from a Richard Perle nightclub set.
Much of Adelman's comic vision comes
through in his artful descriptions. Devotees of the wry wit of
Bob Newhart will chortle over such phrases as "the gifted
Bush foreign policy team", "liberating Iraq will be
a cakewalk", and "dancing in the streets of Baghdad
will be even more joyous than that in Kabul after its liberation".
Adelman, who sought military service but was refused it due
to a most unfortunate bout with Eczema, speaks likewise of militarily-enforced
"no-drive zones" and of arming Saddam's opponents "everywhere"
by way of facilitating the promised cakewalk.
A cakewalk for the owners of the guns
and not the fighters of the war. A cakewalk for the profiteers,
who spin garbage to Americans about "liberation" and
the "rule of law" even as these same profiteers devalue
US currency beyond repair. This cakewalk is coming soon; bookies
and Senators alike in Moscow peg 9/11 as the day "America
strikes back." Perhaps it shall come to pass on that day,
the descendants of slaves and dirt farmers locked in "urban
combat" with people defending their homes, families, and
possessions. And their effort, five or ten years down the road,
disowned by the politicians willing to cash their dead asses
in for poll bounces, willing to impose untold horrors on boys
from Alabama so that CNN can show a shot of some alleged Iraqi
kids moonwalking in the streets while drinking popular soft drinks.
There will be some among us who will call that, unaccountably,
liberation, or heroism, or some such word bled of its meaning
as so many words in this age have been.
Anthony Gancarski is the author of Unfortunate Incidents and currently
a student at Gonzaga Law School in Spokane, Washington. He can
be reached at anthony.gancarski@attbi.com
Today's Features
Nabil Amro
Leadership
& Legitimacy:
An Open Letter to Arafat
Robert Fisk
A Forgotten
Holocaust:
The British in Palestine
Uri Avnery
The Return
of the Dinosaurs
New
Print Edition of CounterPunch Available Exclusively
to Subscribers:
- War Talk As White Noise:
Anything to Get Harken and Halliburton
Out of the Headlines;
- First Hilliard, Then
McKinney: Jewish
Groups Target Blacks Brave Enough to Talk About Justice in the
Middle East; Intimidation
is the Name of the Game; Smearing
"Insane" McKinney As Muslims' Pawn;
- The Missing Terrorist?
Calling Scotland
Yard: "Where's Atif?"
- They Never Booed Dylan!:
Tape Transcript Shows
Famed Newport Folkfest Dissing of Electric Dylan Not True. The Catcalls were for Peter
Yarrow!
- New Shame from the Liffey
Shrike
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September
3, 2002
Nabil Amro
Leadership
& Legitimacy:
An Open Letter to Arafat
Robert Fisk
A Forgotten
Holocaust:
The British in Palestine
Uri Avnery
The Return
of the Dinosaurs
September
2, 2002
Francis Boyle
Flashback:
US War Crimes During the Gulf War
Lou Cohan
Confessions
of a Downloader
Philip Farruggio
Labor
Day Antidote to Apathy
William Blum
Cuban Political
Prisoners
in the US
September
1, 2002
Dave Marsh
No Surrender:
Springsteen's The Rising
August 31,
2002
Gavin Keeney
Return to the
Charterhouse of Parma
David Vest
Porkland:
Confronting Republicans & Police in Portland
Ralph Nader
The Highway
Lobby
M. Shahid
Alam
CNN Reporting
(poem)
Neve Gordon
Sharon's
Subjugation Strategy
Dr. Susan
Block
The Gangbang
Asthete
The Sexual Life
of Catherine M.
Kurt Nimmo
Clueless
at the State Dept.
August 30,
2002
Alexander
Cockburn
American
Journal:
Hitchens, Kissinger, Springsteen, Haggard & Elvis
August 29,
2002
Chris Floyd
The Secret
Sharers:
The CIA and the Murder of Frank Olson
August 28,
2002
William Ring
War on Iraq:
The Brightest Scenario
August 27,
2002
Sam Bahour
The Violence
of Curfew
Wenonah Hauter
From Johannesburg:
Pacts with the Devil: Public-Private Partnerships and the Global
Environment
Jerre Skog
Wanted:
"Our Kind of Guy"
in Iraq!
Uri Avnery
Letter
to a Pilot
August 26,
2002
Sami Al-Arian
Fighting
for the Right of
Dissent and Due Process
Ruebner /
Turaani
What
is Israel Hiding?
Norman Madarasz
Brazil
and the IMF:
Democracy and Emerging Market Liberalism
Robert Fisk
War Crimes:
Reporters Aren't Prosecutors
Douglas Valentine
Phoenix,
CIA and Maj. Gen. Bruce Lawlor: From Vietnam
to Homeland Security
August 24
/ 25, 2002
Susan Davis
Proverbial
Wisdom:
Of Clogs and Enron
Falk / Krieger
No War
Against Iraq
Ceylon Mooney
Fasting
for Iraq
Jonathon
Wright
Police
Brutality in Atlanta
Ralph Nader
Congress's
Pay Raise Scam
Jeffrey St.
Clair
Chainsaw
George
Alexander
Cockburn
Alterman
Cheapens Holocaust
August 23,
2002
Dave Marsh
Selling
Out?
Anthony Gancarski
Super-Duper:
Oil, al-Qaeda and a West African Adventure
William Hughes
Lieberman's
Conflict
of Interest?
Kurt Nimmo
The Lapdog
Conversion of CNN:
They Didn't Want to "Criticize" a Popular War
Sean Donahue
Hardline
in Colombia
Resources:
100s of Links
About 9/11
CounterPunch:
Complete
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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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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