Chris, that is untrue and unfair.
I do not condemn all Americans for the actions of the few.
I am exhorting the vast majority to see what's been done in their name and to make those criminal few accountable.
America is in the hands of a minority of people whose driving purpose is to ferment war but any means.
The Americans I know are not oblivious to this but believe they are powerless to do anything about it.
They already know America is torturing thousands and killing hundreds of thousands of Muslims.
This war on terrorism is a clueless as their war on drugs and for the same reasons.
There would be no terrorists if America stopped training them and giving them guns!
We see from this report that the Americans themselves are arming the terrorists!!!
I have said this all along and here are independent accounts via a court judgement.
They are torturing and murdering their own Bureau operatives in order to do perpetuate this.
This is so wrongheaded on so many levels that it defies belief and yet people can't take action.
(ONQ, that wasn't Chris you replied to)
The Bush government in general and Donald Rumsfeld in particular were guilty of telling lies, twisting the anger of the American people after the 9/11 attacks to their own aggressive ends and plunging America into an unjustified war that has resulted in the deaths of tens of thousands of innocent people. They have weakened America economically and politically and helped to make the world a more dangerous place.
But they are not America.
If and when any of them face justice they will do so in America. That’s something the Americans are good at; making their great and good face justice. I can’t think of any other world power, major of minor, that is better at that than them. OK, maybe good at it is stretching things; how about less bad at it?
The constantly used term “American lives” is deeply disturbing. It gives currency to the notion that an American life is worth more than any other life. That’s a really dangerous concept and unfortunately it is used by all sides in the national dialogue within the USA.
Where we disagree it on the notion that this is somehow worse than how other countries have behaved in the past or behave now. Since the Second World War European powers have been responsible for the massacre of hundreds of thousands of civilians. I don’t mean indirectly I mean European soldiers murdering unarmed non-combatant civilian men, women and children. In that group you can include the Dutch in Indonesia in the late 40’s, the British in the Middle East in the 50’s, the French in North Africa in the 50’s, the French, British and Belgians in sub-Saharan Africa in the 50’s, 60’s and 70’s. I’m sure the list can be added to but I don’t know my history well enough to do so but if you extend to list out to client states that were funded and directed by European powers then the death toll goes up into the millions. It’s deeply ironic that the country that houses the international court of justice has never apologised for the massacres it carried out while trying to hold onto its last vestiges of empire.
What America did under Bush is not exceptional in the least. Look at what America did while fighting the cold war by proxy in Africa, South and Central America and South east Asia. Look at what the Soviet Union did in the same places at the same time. Then add China to the list.
Your comment “There would be no terrorists if America stopped training them and giving them guns!” is exceptionally naive. Terrorism is the result of unequal military force and ideology that places victory above the lives or human rights of any person on any side. The world is a dangerous and nasty place. The clientism that we see is only the tip of the iceberg; secondary and tertiary clientism, the knock on consequence of empowering one side or another at one time or another is where the real depravity happens. The cycle has gone on for millennia. America didn’t start it and couldn’t stop it if it tried and when America, at some stage in the future, is gone the cycle will continue with barely a hiccup. Or course that doesn't make it right but it's nothing special.
We in this country live in a bubble of order and civility that is the exception. That bubble is maintained by the violence of others and a deeply unjust distribution of wealth. Unless we are willing to be much poorer then we’d better hope it stays that way. For those that find the current way of things unpalatable then you should rejoice every time a job moved from Ireland to a poor country as it’s just one more tiny step in making the world a more just place for all of us.
If you think the whole world can have what we have then you are kidding yourself.