20170426 War lies destroy freedom

From Collateral Murder https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5rXPrfnU3G0

Born in 1943 I have only infant memories of WWII which are so formless as to be inconsequential except for one which I described in my blog, The Whole Truth and Nothing But, (http://filosuferz.blogspot.com/2015/06/20150608.html), about a flight of B24s directly overhead celebrating the end of the war. 

Everything else, films, eventually TV shows, interspersed here and there with stories about my uncle Tony who had been in the US Navy, taken captive in the the Philippines early on, spending almost the whole of the war in a Japanese POW camp. Another uncle had miraculously survived a rotation in the Eighth Air Force returned to marry my mom’s step sister. But he didn’t talk much. Tony stayed in San Diego, somewhat recovered from his 95 pound release weight, but became a roaring alcoholic.

Periodically my parents were visited by “DPs,” foreigners from the war countries, typically Poland, who were vaguely related to us, oddly dressed, and unable to speak English. I was six at the time and the concept of refugees made no sense to me. I didn’t like them; their kids broke my toys.

All I knew about the war I learned years later but by then I had incorporated all the generally accepted public notions about it. We had been attacked sneakily by the slant-eyed, yellow peril whom we bombed with two dramatically “holy” weapons, thereby sparing the lives of millions of our “boys” who would have been killed in an invasion.

We, and we alone, maybe with some help from the Brits, none from the French, won the war in western Europe and had nobly stepped aside to let the Russians claim the prize. Only then to discover our great eastern ally couldn’t be trusted. Good thing too, since my dad worked for a defense industry that kept producing when everything else retooled for domestic goods.

Another soldier came back to marry another of my mom’s step-sisters, and the uncle from the bomber group went on to college on something called the GI bill. Remarkable benefit everyone in the larger family thought. They studied science and became insurance agents.

We learned a lot more about the war the farther we got from it. Freedoms? “The slip of a lip can sink a ship,” so, don’t talk—some weapons production still couldn’t be discussed in view of the Soviet threat looming over us. Watch who you’re befriending—anybody could be a Communist, they’re secretive. A few people actually were German soldiers during the war. People kind of knew but gave them the benefit of the doubt—they were starting over in America. We never encountered Japanese in the midwest.

Still things got discussed. The navy could read Japanese military communiques. How early? Early enough to put the Pacific stations on alert? Didn’t it occur to anyone when the Japanese diplomats all walked out a war might be in the works? Hey, not FDR, we loved FDR. He saved us during the Depression. 

There were lots of lies about their cruelties to us but not much about our cruelties to them. We fought fair and square like good Christian gentlemen. They were the bad guys who killed Jews

in concentration camps. Only if you searched did you hear about a ship full of Jewish refugees being turned away by us from the east coast.

When you limit what a person can know, even in the primitive pre-surveillance atmosphere of the 1930s, you are severely limiting their choices. Keeping them confused and misinformed following the war accomplished the same. They can’t act if they don’t know, so don’t tell them. Feed ‘em a lie if you have to.

Films of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki victims of the atomic flashes were deemed so horrid they were locked away in the archives for decades before anyone could see them publicly. We’re still building bombs, even worse, more lethal bombs, don’t let them know how bad it can get. The anti-bomb activists are Communists and traitors who should be locked up.  

Then there were the moral questions being discussed in my college years. We switched from factories as targets to cities as targets because we couldn’t bomb accurately enough? Did that speed the end of the war like we were told it would? The British resisted more. The German factories were moved to caves.

Weren’t the Japanese ready to surrender before the atom bombs fell? Couldn’t we have just demonstrated their effectiveness on some empty island? Or were we telling the Soviets we’ve got these great bombs and the willingness to drop them on real people so don’t mess with us? 

Did our policy of accepting only “unconditional surrender” prolong the war and lose many lives who could have been saved?

Turning to current conflicts, we see again the lies are all over the place. Our own officials are caught lying to our own congressional committees. Our soldiers who blow the whistle on war crimes are thrown into prison. We violate our constitution and international laws so broadly who knows how Bin Laden got killed? We torture but deny it.

We are currently in a state of several undeclared wars with a chief executive who can decide any one of us can be hauled away or eliminated on his say so. Be careful what you say on the phone it’s all being recorded and kept for when it’s needed. They can track the books we read and people we call. Most are convinced it’s all for our own good. After all, if you haven’t done anything, why worry about them snapping you out of line next time you’re at an airport? 

20170422 Moral War?

Photo from the My Lai photos only years
later identifies the "Black Blouse Girl" as
a victim of attempted rape by US soldiers.
Sometimes killing is not enough.*

Who can look on a battlefield, see the severed parts of the slain, smell their corrupting bodies or burning flesh and conclude this was good, this  was moral, the victory achieved here merited this waste of human life and the corresponding destruction of its survivors’ minds and values? Yet Lincoln looked out on Gettysburg and sought to honor, not to condemn the combatants. 

Additionally there are other costs of conflict, the price of reconstructing bombed buildings, ports, roads, and the like, and the diversion of funds from construction or manufacture of needed schools, hospitals, and homes for the sake of weapons, military training, removal of the healthy from the workforce to gather an army, and the resulting disruption of society, families without husbands, fathers, sisters, wives, or mothers, sons and daughters, disrupted education of scholars, grief over the dead, and the burden of care for those who return maimed and disabled. Burial costs vary depending on how much, if any, of the bodies come back.

The Veterans for Peace t-shirt I wear is imprinted with Eisenhower’s warning: “I hate war as only a soldier who has lived it can, as only one who has seen its brutality, its futility, its stupidity.” I question it. Why is the wisdom always too late—always after the fact, as if each generation must discover the truth for itself, unable to learn from its forebears? The objective consideration of the tragedy of a battlefield or cursory review of the accounting proves time over time war destroys more than it saves. Participation in such waste and slaughter is immoral on its face.

Most recently I heard a proud Vietnam veteran defend his involvement saying, “The ten commandments actually don’t say ‘Thou shalt not kill,’ but ‘Thou shalt not murder,’” and further, he said, “I killed many but murdered none.” So to him taking a life in war is nothing to keep you from sleeping like a baby. We didn’t get into the weeds about whether he knew his opponents, whether they were armed, and whether he was in imminent danger, or whether they were men, women, children, infants, aged, sickly, or proven guilty of participating in attacks on Americans.

From my reading of Nick Turse’s Kill Anything that Moves I knew that  My Lai was not a one-off event, that much of the killing in Vietnam followed the pattern, “See a gook, shoot a gook.” Free fire zones allowed pilots to exhaust their weapons on whatever villages they flew over as they returned to base—no time for so much as a “How do you do,”—just blast or bomb. Killing is what war is.

The just war principles of Augustine have rarely limited the blood lust actual conflict engenders.  The classical clashes of rank-and-file archers, brightly clad fusiliers, were limited to wars on broad plains where such fine points as flanking and advancing on one another on disorderly and smoky battlefields look so quaint to us today as if they were designed for epic films on large screens. 

But once these slaughters were decided, the victors turned to the enemies’ towns and villages for spoils—women to rape, food from farms, and leaving burning wrecks of their foes’ properties. It’s been the pattern from ancient times to the present. Recent reports are that the ratios of civilian to military killed have flip-flopped from one of ten to nine of ten in twenty-first century war.

The loosening of restrictions on US military in today’s drone attacks has revised by an inordinate degree whatever caution for minimal killing civilians (collateral damage). Now there is no question of waiting for innocents to clear from a target. Strike if the target is available. Those others should not have been standing anywhere near the enemy.

All this being said, still I am perplexed by how to advise a society under attack by a recognized evil. While I can conclude the killing must be limited only to combatants purely as self-defense, I cannot decide for another not to use violence in self-defense or to defend an innocent, however much I may personally disavow such action. 

Regrettably that admission permits the open growth of military establishments, production and stockpiling of  weaponry, on the possibility that their use in defensive war may one day be necessary. Yet I know that such developments, taken either by all nations or even by only a single fearful one, increase the likelihood of massive immoral, unrelenting death.

If what I have delineated is truly the case, can we ever eliminate war? I contend that war is eliminated only insofar as each potential soldier refuses to kill. War is eliminated when workers refuse to make weapons. War is eliminated when we beat our swords into plowshares and study war no more. War is eliminated when we realize we are all in the same boat, this singular planet Earth which must serve as home for all of us who are here now and for all future generations. The conviction “I will not kill another” must be grounded in every individual conscience above the dictates of clan or nation. 

Instead we must work to reduce fear of the “other.” We can do so by dedicating ourselves to the betterment of life for everyone in the world, not just those we see as our own—those who look or talk like us. We must work to see that every one of our neighbors has clean water, decent shelter, nourishing food, all education for which they are able, medical care, and opportunities to contribute to others through meaningful work.

Only by forsaking our competitive delusions will we eliminate war as a morally acceptable solution to disagreements.

c. J.S.Manista, 2017

*http://www.readingthepictures.org/2013/10/my-lai-sexual-assault-and-the-black-blouse-girl-forty-five-years-later-one-of-americas-most-iconic-photos-hides-truth-in-plain-sight/

20170417 (MALE judge weeps for MALE criminal)

Keith Vallejo, convicted sex offender, deemed by Provo Judge Thomas Low tearfully "a good man"

I’ve been trying to understand

The motive of a self-described

Contemporary conservative 

(Who will not admit he voted

For Dump) in defending Provo

Judge Thomas Low’s comments

And manner in sentencing Keith

Vallejo, a former Mormon bishop,

Who had been convicted of one

First degree felony of object rape

And ten second degree felonies

Of forcible sexual abuse. Judge 

Low sentenced the convicted

Offender to five years to life

For the offenses but in the 

Presence of Ms Julia Kirby,

One of the two victims, went

On to note in a tearful commentary

That Mr. Vallejo was an “extraordinarily

Good man. But great men sometimes 

Do bad things.” At no point did the 

Judge point out to Mr. Vallejo, who 

Denied the charges throughout, 

That he should take responsibility

For the harm he did to the victims.

Earlier this judge had released him

Following his conviction in February

To be free at home pending his

Sentencing on April 13. The judge

Changed his mind and Vallejo

Was placed in jail from March 30.

Fifty good character letters had

Been received praising Vallejo’s

Many acts of kindness and his

Service as a volunteer bishop

In the Church of the Latter-Day

Saints, seeking the Judge’s

Sympathy for the convict.

When I raised the topic as an

Example of typical Mormon

Male preference to my male

Conservative colleague he

Exploded, “You haven’t got 

All the facts. You take Rachel 

Maddow at her word in some

Abbreviated retelling and she

Leaves out the important factor

That so many wrote the judge

On Vallejo’s behalf, he had to

Make some comment.” First,

I told him I hadn’t gotten the

Information from Ms Maddow*

And second, that even a character 

Letter from the Pope wouldn’t

Have given Low permission to

Make such insensitive remarks

Before the victim. “You’re

Forgetting the victim has already

Received her justice: he sentenced

The dude to the max allowed.

What should she care what the 

Judge said about Vallejo? The 

Man made a mistake—a serious

Mistake—and he’s gonna pay. 

I’m just claiming what you libs

Always claim: Don’t condemn

A good life because of one

Mistake.”  I couldn’t understand

How he consistently missed 

Every point I mentioned about

The judge’s unprofessional,

Insensitive, chauvinist action.

I wasn’t getting anywhere as he

Remained adamantly opposed

And contended: “The judge did

As his office required. The guy

Got the maximum. All the rest

Is your misplaced liberal/progressive

Sympathies which don’t matter

In real life.” I tried everything I

Could but afterward realized I’d

Held back what could have 

Shifted his view. What if the 

Victims had been your daughters?

c. 2017, J.S.Manista

*http://www.sltrib.com/home/5180903-155/complaints-mount-against-utah-judge-who

20170416 War may not go away

To my mind war is the last societally approved outlet for the release of that immense human rage accumulating in us with each denial, insult, deprivation, and offense. We had to learn to suppress that whole-body response instinctive in an infant’s reaction to hunger and other basic needs. Supposedly we sublimate these feelings and release this energy in physical exercise.

I’d argue against that. Consider the fan-wreckage that results when a boisterous mob leaves the stadium after their team has “suffered” an ignominious loss at the hands of their rivals. It doesn’t even have to be a loss to convert cheering masses into an exuberant mob who explode in a comparable fit of collegial vandalism. This occurs despite several hours of  yelling, strenuous getting up and down in their seats, which by itself would have been exhausting. Instead of quietly returning home, these benighted souls, fueled often enough by alcohol, break storefronts, flip over a few police vans, and set them on fire till the scene resembles many from Apocalypse Now.

Granted my example adds the social frame, elements of peer approval and expectation very like the camaraderie fostered in military training, gang participation, identifying with bullies. Muddle the mix with a heritage of competition and issues of self-esteem. Perhaps I should have first and more simply likened rage-release to a fist fight, social but limited to one on one.

By removing the social aspect entirely one can conclude the destructive acts of a frustrated artist or sculptor who in the privacy of the studio slashes paintings with a pallet-knife or smashes figures to dust with his hammer may have a cathartic effect for the individual involved independently of whether they are witnessed or not. As we examine factors affecting this issue we can see there is more than a categorical difference between violence on objects and violence on sentient creatures, particularly when witnessed or even aided by comrades.

Merely confronting an adversary has the perk of self-affirmation when one decides to take on an issue “OK, this room isn’t cleaning itself,” rather than continuing to ignore or circumvent it, “Hey, Bully, do I have your attention?” 

I remember reading in David Grossman’s On Killing that military trainers begin with one-on one exercises in which combatants are urged to “Pull out the stops; hurt the other guy.” The trainer assures them he will stop the fight before actual harm occurs but often errs on the side of excess to allow their full rage to emerge. It isn’t long before the two are drawing on that underlying reserve and inflicting damage neither of which would have considered themselves capable. As I first said, war (here, training for war) is where society permits release of primeval rage. Sounds a lot like Fight Club but the film was fantasy. Military training is real.

Several other examples come to mind, though, of state-sanctioned rage release: over-the-top police violence and the death penalty. How many times must we see amateur videos of police using unrestrained violence against offenders whose violations merit little more than warnings?  Eric Garner’s death in Staten Island from a choke hold for selling loose cigarettes and more recently Nandi Cain, Jr.,’s beating for jaywalking.

Killing convicted criminals has often been shown to be be unmerited in many cases shown in the work of the Innocence Project. Nevertheless, the death penalty lingers as a way of addressing the inner rage of many, both within and outside the family of the victim, demanding “closure.”

The last example of state sanctioned methods of speculatively disabling the ID, that inner madman present in every human being, is through vicarious experience: drama, cinema, audio, and literature. I say speculatively in that I have not researched to determine if any vicarious activity (from watching Saving Private Ryan, to music, to having a beer in bar with a talkative veteran) has any proven reduction or aggravation of inner rage. Such studies can be plagued with variation in individual subjects, as is so commonly observed in comparable studies of viewing violence or pornography.

Undeniably the inner I’m writing about is the product of evolutionary development which increases a species likelihood for survival: “The squeaky wheel gets the grease,” the screaming baby is likelier to have its needs met to survive and ultimately to pass its genetic heritage on to future generations than a genetically docile child who despite its other potentials for genius might be neglected, get sick, and die. 

I confess I can’t say whether war can be abolished however much I hope that it can, should, and must be. My fear is the rage instinct which is so deeply rooted in our infant and childhood psyches, will be extremely difficult to uproot despite our responsibly over layering it with sophisticated and maturely considered analyses and training. Such urges will defiantly persist to rise as strongly again under the proper (probably subconscious) appeals like nationalism, racism, self esteem. and self-defense.

But since war is so heinous, the argument that eradicating it will be difficult does not excuse us from trying. Part of trying will involve greater awareness of the realities of war. The Red Badge of Courage and All Quiet on the Western Front contribute to that greater knowledge as do songs like Johnny, We Hardly Knew Ya and So Long, Mom, I’m off to Drop the Bomb. 

Today’s mass media are doing a terrible job of realistic war coverage: first by not scrutinizing the push for war or labelling the lies that make truth the first victim of war; second by not showing the horrors of war and sparing the public the images they, as taxpayers, are supporting by not pressing to end or to prevent wars; third by not describing the evil wreaked upon the aged, the sick, the women and children, in short, the innocents among the enemy; and last by not following through on the long lasting effects of war on the warriors, the families of warriors, and the damage to the humanity of our own culture and that of the enemy

Only by protracted and specific telling of the truth about war, only by expunging the “glory” and phony high moral status attendant on battle, and only by developing alternatives to managing extreme inner stress early in childhood and consistently through family life and citizenly endeavor can we say we’re making an honest effort to abolish war.


c. 2017, J.S.Manista

20170325 (insurance)

To be irksome many will say they're not in the same boat.

 Dump's withdrawal of his

Health care reform reveals

Again the divide separating

Americans yawns wider than

Any bridge they’re willing

To build. Health insurance, for

That matter any insurance,

Succeeds when a given class

Agrees to pay enough to help

Anybody else in the same boat

On similar risks. Obviously

Many legislators would like 

To pretend certain voters are

“Not in the same boat”: men

Who clutch at subsidizing 

Prenatal, maternity care, even

Breast cancer screenings.

Are not they married or fathers?

Do they get off by sticking

Their schvantzes in old mossy 

Knotholes? Perhaps they still

Believe storks efficiently 

Deliver only healthy, full-term

Progeny sans complications

In neat white cotton didies. 

Youngsters refuse benefits 

For senior care. Do they plan 

On, “living fast, dying young,

And leaving pretty corpses”? 

The elderly, those gobblers

Of the medical pie, refuse to

Fund abortions or contraceptives

Since in their days of wild oats 

And procreation they frolicked

Without unseemly incidents:

“Just say No,” they coldly advise.

Nonsmokers pay for smokers?

And thus the vast pool of eligibles

Shrinks to the size of seven

Billionaires too stingy to pay

For the travails of any with 

Less. Back then to the actuaries

Who will have to meter benefits

Not based on exposure to risks

But by how much each insured 

Has kicked in. “You’ve paid 

Only for the last five years. Why

Should you receive what long term

Subscribers get?” The metaphor

Fails altogether. “OK. Everybody

Out of the boat, you selfish bastards. 

Not a one of you deserves saving.”

c. 2017, J.S.Manista