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CounterPunch
October
28, 2002
Johnny Muhammad
Got His Gun
by ANTHONY GANCARSKI
Isn't that a hoot? The Sniper fall guys -- each
of them with looks in their eyes blank as empty fishbowls --
had something called a "play father" arrangement. One
can't imagine that phrase having problematic connotations. At
TV trays all over the nation, addled men and women everywhere
ask their beleaguered mealtime companions something along the
lines of "what exactly were they playing?"
There is something inherently mocking
about Fox News and MSNBC pimping that phrase; the suggestion
is that people in their right minds would never use such wording.
Of course, the relationship between John Muhammad [a name worthy
of early Pynchon] and Lee Malvo looks intended to conjure up
unsavory images in the minds of so-called reasonable people everywhere.
One can imagine Ann Coulter or some other sniper of the op-ed
world holding forth about storming the shelters and converting
the hapless occupants to Christianity, or what passes for it
these days. Just as one has already heard the snipers linked
with a Whitman's Sampler of crimes unrelated to the sniper incidents,
from holding up liquor stores to "human smuggling.".
It is interesting that, even though the case against these two
is supposed to be ironclad, so much energy is spent accusing
the snipers of thought crimes. We repeatedly have been told,
for example, that Muhammad was "sympathetic" to the
9/11 hijackers. And by sympathy, the corporate media doesn't
mean that he sent them FTD Pick Me Up bouquets when they were
feeling particularly low and/or radically Muslim. Rather, that
he sympathized with their purported views, and that said sympathy
is wrong in and of itself.
These questions are never posed in a
serious way, but they bear asking nonetheless. Why would someone
who has given a large swath of his life to serving the US war
machine lose faith in his life's work to such a degree that he
would start working for the "other side"? Why would
a thoroughly indoctrinated soldier like Muhammad reject that
indoctrination by turning his own gun and bullets against those
Americans he once "defended"? Why are the self-styled
experts in the media so willing to see this sniper's acts as
those of armed insurgency, yet so unwilling to ask why a soldier
of such tenure would turn guerrilla against his own flag?
Perhaps Muhammad himself felt betrayed
by this American system so willing to issue encomiums when people
for its sake, yet so unwilling to help those who actually stick
around. Perhaps Muhammad knew that he had given his life to institutions
that promised paradise but delivered purgatory at best. Muhammad
and Malvo will spend the rest of their lives getting to know
the American system of jurisprudence, but in the case of John
Muhammad, it is hard not to think that he knew that system long
before he began his short but eventful run as the DC Sniper.
Maybe he couldn't shake what so many suspect: that human life
is but a commodity to those who determine the value of things,
and not a particularly prized one at that.
Anthony Gancarski is a regular contributor to Counterpunch. His
work has recently been featured in Utne Reader's "Web Watch".
He accepts email at Anthony.Gancarski@attbi.com.
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October 14,
2002
Harry Browne
Ireland:
No to War; No to Nice
Don Atapattu
The Tragedy of Alan Dershowitz
Linda Heard
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Flashback: Inspecting Nuclear Israel
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