The Blanket

Foul Shots

Karen Cox

With the trembling fervor of a newly-anointed disciple in a melange of Bob Grant White Hate Radio Rant and Satinesque Radical Middle Thought-Less Nouveau Imperialism came the three-pronged mendacious alogy, an arrogant impetus to repeat the past. In summary:

1. The U. S. Ascendant Force is stretched beyond its physical limits babysitting the Rest of The World in a mighty effort to police The Incompetent Fatuous Others who will otherwise bereft of Our Supreme Intervention fall upon each other in a satanic quagmire of flesh-rending maleficent frenzy;

2. All persons of African descent are predisposed to unspeakable acts of violence against themselves and others* therefore rendering them less than subhuman and all Asians can be placed in that same category if they can be distracted long enough from one of several vile daily pastimes they share with Africans, i.e., ripping intestines out of the living, etc.;

3. Cowardly Irish republicans are waiting in the wings with demonic urgency eager to applaud gleefully when America takes a hit.

Gaping, all agog, I managed "She did not just say that."

Ahh, but I'm afraid she did, she did indeed. In three and one half pages of purblind rambling, Nearly The Entire Planet was insulted including Fellow Americans -- by association with the ideas -- and Furred Members of The Natural World -- by insolent inclemency. Snap Shot was entirely disconnected from its reference to Avoiding Park Benches except for the shared word "Rwanda".

Let's do look at 'Rwanda'. Defining Ruandi-Urundans as 'Tutsi' and 'Hutu' is a gross simplification of intricate kinship, political, and economic interrelations that existed among the indigenous Twa, the Bantu-speaking baHutu and the Hima baTutsi with their long history of intermarriage and cohabitation. Before German, British, and Belgian colonial exploits, the cattle/client-patron/status marriage-based clan system was remarkably homogenous and fluid. A person could be 'Tutsi' and 'Hutu' simultaneously in a complex language that fit the society. Colonialism imposed racial attitudes, rigid stratification, and foreign religion which destroyed the fabric of Ruandan-Urundan culture, pitting portions of society against each other through manipulation of attitudes and privilege. That paved the way for eternal war and exploitation shielded by selective sanitized language.

Once, there was a chance for Rwanda and Burundi. In the neighboring Congo there was an exceedingly dangerous man whose progressive social movement threatened to bring sweeping stability and peace to all of Africa. The grisly tale snakes through Belgium's obscene profits from copper-uranium-gold mines, foreign banking, a future MI5 head and deliberations at Whitehall, Eisenhower's order, CIA and poisoned toothpaste, UN complicity and ends with the humiliation, torture, and execution of Prime Minister Patrice Lumumba, age thirty-five, and two of his ministers.

"The following day Katanga's interior minister called a senior Belgian policeman to his office with orders to conceal the killings. He said 'You destroy them, you make them disappear. How you do it doesn't interest me,' says Gerard Soerte. Soerte and a companion exhumed the bodies from shallow graves, hacked them into pieces and dissolved them in acid from the Belgian-run mines nearby. 'We were there for two days,' says Soerte. 'We did things an animal wouldn't do. That's why we were drunk. Stone drunk.' When they ran out of acid, they made a fire for the last remains. When they had finished, there was no trace of human remains." (Akerman)

Patrice Lumumba was an important man.

Worldwide, the greedy little power manipulations are disguised and explained away behind the brutal tolls of both trumpeted mobilized warfare and shrouded insidious oppression whereby the corrupt ruling elite serviced by the sacrifices of those coerced or conscripted to The Cause pit brother against sister against brother fostering the most despicable crimes humans are made capable of by teaching them to dehumanize and demonize the victim.

A few known atrocities of the U. S. government's military:

Mobile Bay, Trail of Tears, Matamoros, Monterey, Vera Cruz (twice), Chapultepec, Huamantla, Thibodaux, Wounded Knee, The Philippines, Ludlow Tent Colony, Tulsa, Inchon Port, No Gun Ri, Sinchon, Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Pilsen, Royan, My Lai, Kent, El Mozote, Mutlaa/Basra, Mazar-i-Sharif, Kunduz, Kandahar, Sherbergan

Some of the racist rationale:

"Our fighting blood was up, and we wanted to kill niggers… This shooting human beings is a hot game and beats hunting all to pieces. We charged them and such a slaughter you never saw. We killed them like rabbits; hundreds, yes, thousands of them. Everyone was crazy. [The killing was] fast and furious, the dead goo-goos piling up thicker than buffalo chips. Picking off niggers in the water [was] more fun than a turkey shoot... Nigger fighting business... I am in my glory when I can sight my gun on some brown skin and pull the trigger." Anonymous U. S. Soldiers, on orders to kill anyone over the age of ten, The War in The Philippines.

"Think of it, niggers speaking French!"
Secretary of State William Jennings Bryan, The Occupation of Haiti.

"First, the underlying rational policy, that is, that the only good gook is a dead gook. Very similar to the only good Indian is a dead Indian and the only good nigger is a dead nigger."
Captain Robert B. Johnson, U. S. Army, West Point/'65, in testimony on The War in Vietnam.

"Expressing his disgust at an 'indoctrination' in which Marines chanted, 'Rape the town and kill the people, that’s the thing we love to do', during five-mile runs, and were frequently roused with cries of 'Nuke the sand-niggers in the Middle East', Larson said 'Why didn’t I speak up earlier… I fell for the whole boot camp thing hook, line, and sinker'."
Erik Larson, deserter, U. S. Marine Reservist, The Persian Gulf War.

"If there was anybody there, they were the enemy. We were told specifically that if there were women and children to kill them."
Private Matt Guckenheimer, U. S. Army, The War in Afghanistan.

Baby-sitting?

Some of the world's war veterans, the substance-abusing veterans of the U. S. military from years past and recent, the drunken and suicidally despondent Dallaire, Northern Irelanders shuffling along streets with this night's blue bag, attempt to escape from what they saw or what they did and what they fear will happen again.

Central to preventing recurrence is the open-minded willingness to explore history and the self-restraint to listen long enough to grasp it. "Either the United States will destroy ignorance or ignorance will destroy the United States." (W. E. B. Du Bois)


*The Color Line: 'Black-on-black violence' is the racist rationale behind the U.S. federally-funded Violence Initiative Project and the National Institute of Mental Health's biomedical social controls which use 'scientific' study by way of statistical manipulation to prove racist views in the utterly-discredited Jensen style targeting people of African descent and Latinos. The reference to 'blackness' or 'color' is shaded depending on the preference of the racist, i.e., the Irish were considered 'colored' in Victorian England. Focusing on 'black-on-black violence' as a risk factor is an inherently paternalistic racist tool implying that violence is particular to or more acceptable in black communities. Also, this is a peculiar way of referring to large-scale war. For example, no one refers to WWII as 'white-on-white violence' or the war in Bosnia as 'white-on-white violence'. In addition, the 'black-on-black violence' label removes white society and the state apartheid apparatus from the responsibility of extreme colonial and post-colonial social decay. The rationale justifies different methods of policing and unequal standards of justice and civil rights for blacks and whites. "Unemployment runs in the genes just like bad teeth." (Richard Herrnstein, Princeton University, co-author of The Bell Curve.) The implications of such 'scientific' racism resurfacing again at a time in which biomedical ethics is not just a debate but an oxymoron are frightening.

For opinions on war from some of the United States of America's Veterans of War go to: Veterans For Peace and Vietnam Veterans Against the War Anti-Imperialists

 



 

 

 

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Index: Current Articles

4 August 2002

 

Other Articles From This Issue:

 

Priorities

Davy Carlin

 

Sectarians For Peace?
Sean Smyth

 

Nuff Said
Eoghan O'Suilleabhain

 

Saol Nua

Sean O'Lubaigh

 

Stake Knife Runs the Rafia
Brian Mór

 

The Death of Cú Chulainn
Brian Mór

 

SAS Stake Knife
Brian Mór

 

No Punishment Too Great

Anthony McIntyre

 

Foul Shots

Karen Cox

 

Insanity or Security?
John Chuckman

 

2 August 2002

 

A Scam In A Pint Glass

Anthony McIntyre

 

Meeting the Paramilitaries

Davy Carlin

 

The GFA's Failure to Deliver An Honest and Genuine Constitutional Settlement Keeps Northern Ireland Divided
Paul A. Fitzsimmons

 

Hold Firm
Niall Fennessy

 

Super Stake Knife
Brian Mór

 

Stake Knife Logo
Brian Mór

 

The Ethics of Revenge

Sam Bahour and Yitzhak Frankenthal

 

A Tale Told By An Idiot
John Chuckman

 

 

 

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