Tuesday, April 03, 2007
Tuesday Topic
the problem with us aMEricans is that we do not have empathy for the "other." We have been raised to believe that America is and always will be right, that we always have the best intentions for the world, and that we have only altruistic intentions for the rest of the world. What history book covers the CIA coup in Iran in 1953? What history book covers the brutality in which we suppressed the Filipino independence movement right after the Spanish-AMERICAN War? Besides the universities, our students are not being told of the darker side of our history. It's not all to be proud of, but our students would not know that.
Take for example, the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. How many of us think that it was a glorious show of might makes right and a justified action to save American lives? Do we ever think that there could have been another option? Perhaps we could have bombed an isolated atoll in the Pacific to impress the Japanese. Perhaps if we might have allowed the emperor of Japan to keep his throne as a ceremonial figure such as the monarch of England and had expressed our willingness to make this concession if you may to the Japanese, perhaps the lives snuffed out by the incinerating pillar of death and sorrow might have been spared. As Dong Long points out, the doves would have cast their lots with the most fanatical of hawks if the Americans had insisted on disposing the emperor. Perhaps if we had not spent the whole war dehumanizing the Japanese who appeared as monstrous vampire bats flying over to suck out the vitality of our country, we might see the other side and have empathy for them.
We see this dehumanization of the enemy or the other throughout our history, especially when it comes to war. Who can forget Colonel John Chivington's infamous words when he ordered his men to massacre the Cheyenne and Arapahoe at Sand Creek, "kill and scalp all, big and little; nits make lice." Who can forget the dehumanization of the Koreans and Vietnamese when we could not distinguish between the "friendlies" and the enemy (which would tragically lead to our troops massacring innocent civilians caught in the crossfire)? Who can forget the countless numbers of victims whose lives were destroyed in our everlasting quest for Manifest Destiny?
This is the tragedy of this war today as it seems like we are doomed to repeat the terrible decisions we have made in the past instead of atoning for our actions. Can anyone tell me the difference between what we are saying about the people of the Middle East to what Chivington said about the innocent women, men, and children his troops were about to massacre? Can anyone point out the difference about how we brutally dealt with the Filipinos who wanted us out of the Philippines just as the Iraqis desperately want us out of Iraq? We are bombarded with stereotypes of the people of the Middle East as vicious terrorists, suicide bombers, radical fanatics, "ragheads," "towelheads," etc. that we cannot see them as humans. This is why you can have ignorant and unfeeling cowards advocating for turning the whole Middle East into a concrete parking lot or whatever the phrase is. We cannot see that the Iraqis might WANT a democracy, but that they don't want it imposed at the point of a gun barrel. We cannot see that the Iraqis do NOT want their oil in the hands of multinational corporations and that they like any other country would want control of their own natural resources. We cannot see that the Iraqis who have lost children, fathers, mothers, brothers, sisters, etc. are turning against us because we promised them that things would be better than it was under Saddam.
It is pointless to ask us Americans how we would feel if another country invaded our country. Would we be not in arms becoming the freedom fighters we so despise in Iraq right now? You can't ask that question, because the answer will be, "No one has the strength to invade America. No one would dare invade." No, we can only see the Iraqis as an ungrateful childlike-people who much like a lion cub we are raising would someday turn on us, ungrateful and oblivious to the fact that we are "helping" them and "liberating" them. We cannot see that we are the aggressors and occupiers of an occupied country. If we did not condemn the French for establishing a resistance movement against the Nazis, then why do we not extend the Iraqis the same courtesy? Yes, that's right, because they are resisting us. Sympathy for the French Resistance or the Prague Spring rings hollow when we do not extend the sympathy for those whom we have been oppressing.
Labels: anti-war, dehumanization, empathy deficit, Iraq, peace, racism
Saturday, March 17, 2007
Peace should be a virtue...
Why is peace so reviled these days? Why is the very notion of peace enough to have the rabid, wingnut right froth at the mouth with self-righteous anger? I had blogged about how peace is now even being equated with Satan as a homeowner’s association in
Our National Litterbox, (I refuse to just call him president) says Jesus is his favorite philosopher. Yet, like the GodMen of
Must everything be a war? We have conjurations of faux and real wars designed to appeal to the men in us. Is this why the military is so afraid of having gay men and women serve in the military openly, because they supposedly go counter against the image of a masculine army trained in the arts of war? Even the media, mainly Faux made up a fictional War on Christmas so that Christian men could claim to be fighting on the sidelines safe in
Does this administration even care that our wounded veterans had to suffer through urine-soaked mattresses, belly-up cockroaches, mice droppings in their living quarters? Could this administration not spend money to fund treatment for our wounded vets coming home? Of course not, this is considered to be nurturing and caring, traits traditionally considered feminine in nature. The hyper-masculine ethos states that money should not be going into social programs designed to give a hand up to those stuck in poverty but to huge weapons, nuclear bombs, bunker-busters, new fighter jets, etc.
We have money to spend on new weapons that are not needed in this new so-called “War on TERROR” yet we cannot spend money to fund VA hospitals and to provide psychological treatment to the wounded. We cannot deal with Post-traumatic stress Disorder as the military brass with the consent of this administration wants to send our troops back into combat without any treatment. After all, a MAN should suck it up and ignore his wounds so that he could fight for the freedom of his country. Those who are expressing concerns about PTSD and their families are being unpatriotic and un-American. It is more of the cult of hyper-masculinity that Glenn Greenwald depicts in this excellent article. After all, if our Litterbox can land a fighter jet at 150 mph on an airplane carrier, then these men should seek to emulate the masculinity of our “Fearless leader.”
Peace should not be a masculine or feminine value...it should be one we hold common whether we are male or female. By assigning it a gender, we cheapen its value and risk having our society which tends to prefer "masculine traits" over "feminine traits" glorify the death and carnage of war. Indeed, the GodMen video from ABCNews talks about how men love blowing things up. While that may be fine in Monster Truck rallies, let us not make blowing things up in war a spectacle much like the ones held in ancient Rome, where even naumachiae or mock naval battles produced casualties.
I believe in the immediate withdrawal of all foreign combat troops from the nation of Iraq. I believe in using my blog, in whole or in part, as a tool toward this end.
Labels: anti-war, Glenn Greenwald, hypermasculinity ethos, Iraq, Litterbox Administration, peace
