I have long thought, and written, that the “GWOT” is a false construct. And common sense says to most people that it is pretty nonsensical. We might as well have a war on sadness or a war on jealousy or a war on hate. As Pach writes in this post from the week-end, terror is a human emotion and you can’t fight a war against it. In fact, war creates it.
But then it isn’t really fair to deride it as a “war on terror,” is it? That’s just the shortcut phrase. The real term is “war on terrorism” which makes just as little sense but in a different way. Terrorism is a method of warfare — a specific type of cheap and dirty violence which is not eradicatable, certainly not eradicatable by force. It is special only in the sense that it makes no distinctions between civilians and warriors. (And if you could eliminate a particularly harsh and inhumane method of warfare, it would certainly make no sense at all to try to do it by throwing aside all civilized norms and engaging in even more odious taboos like torture.)
When you think about it, a “war on terrorism” is actually a “war on warfare” which kind of brings the whole damned thing home, doesn’t it? All warfare is terrifying. Metaphorically, a war on warfare is a nice concept. I can picture some lovely bumper stickers and t-shirts along the lines of “War is not healthy for children and other living things.” “Let’s declare war on warfare” expresses a rather basic premise that war is a bad thing. (Somehow, I don’t think that’s what the architects of the GWOT had in mind.)
A war on warfare is entirely absurd, however, in a literal sense. Using war to eradicate terror or terrorism is an oxymoron. And yet the nation has been drunkenly behaving as if it is a real war, spending the money, deploying the troops, inflicting the violence.
Setting Iraq aside, which was a simple imperialist invasion with no ties to this threat of terrorism, we are dealing with a “war” against certain stateless people who are loosely affiliated with Muslim extremism but could just as easily be nationalists or Christian fanatics or even environmentalists, as our justice department has recently decreed. make no mistake: the GWOT is not a simple shorthand for fighting the “islamofascists.” Islamic extremism is an ideology centered in a religion and it has no “place” — it is not a nation or even a people. Warfare as it has been understood for millenia will not “beat” it. The GWOT masterminds knew this which is why the phrase War on Terrorism was coined: it represents a permanent state of war, which is something else entirely.
This is the problem. This elastic war, this war against warfare, this war with no specific enemy against no specific country is never going to end. It cannot end because there is no end. If the threat of “islamofascim” disappears tomorrow there will be someone else who hates us and who is willing to use individual acts of violence to get what they want. There always have been and there always will be. Which means that we will always be at war with Oceania.
I am not sanguine that we can put this genie back in the bottle. The right will go crazy at the prospect that someone might question whether we are really “at war.” They are so emotionally invested in the idea that they cannot give it up. Indeed, the right is defined by its relationship to the boogeyman, whether communism or terrorism or some other kind of ism (negroism? immigrantism?) They will fight very, very hard to keep this construct going in the most literal sense. And they will probably win in the short term.
But it is long past time for people to start the public counter argument, which has the benefit of appealing to common sense. Many Americans are emerging from the relentless hail of propaganda that overtook the nation after the traumatic events of 9/11. Iraq confused people for a while, but that confusion is leaving in its wake a rather startling clarity: the “war” as the governmehnt defines it is bullshit. It will take a while for this common sense to become conventional wisdom, but it certainly won’t happen if nobody is willing to say it out loud.
What we do about Islamic fundamentalism is a topic we must deal with. I suspect that it will take a global effort and a willingness to deal intelligently with the impending global oil crisis. There will be other challenges as well, including potential wars and regional strife and any of the other things that have marked civilization from the beginning. All peoples must deal with such things.
But there is no war on terrorism. The nation is less secure because of this false construct. We are spending money we need not spend, making enemies we need not make and wasting lives we need not waste in the name of something that doesn’t exist. That is as politically incorrect a statement as can be made in America today. But it’s true.
And I suspect, too, that I will be long in my grave before the “war on terrorism” is a thing of the past. It was a terrible accident of history that September 11th happened when the lunatic neocon cabal was in power. Nothing could have been worse. It was more damaging than the attacks themselves. We’ll be dealing with the fall out from that strange happenstance for a generation.
Good news. South Dakotans got the repeal of the coathanger law on the ballot. But what’s most impressive is that they got 37,846 signatures on their petitions. That’s a lot of signatures in a state than only has about 770,000 people and almost 27% of them are under 18 and can’t vote. Let’s hope they vote this cruel law down in November. South Dakota is as red a state as there is. If this things has gone too far for them then there’s no way anyone can claim it is a mainstream position.
I hadn’t seen this cartoon by Stephanie McMillan about our good friend Bill Napoli, the creator of the Sodomized Virgin exception. You can buy a print or a t-shirt here and it will go to benefit family planning clinics.
And it will greatly annoy Bill Napoli:
“The cartoon generated a huge amount of filth, intolerable filth.” — Senator Bill Napoli
A real-life description [of an exception] to me would be a rape victim, brutally raped, savaged. The girl was a virgin. She was religious. She planned on saving her virginity until she was married. She was brutalized and raped, sodomized as bad as you can possibly make it, and is impregnated. I mean, that girl could be so messed up, physically and psychologically, that carrying that child could very well threaten her life.
This is a man who thinks he has right to tell women what they can do with their own bodies.
Please don’t get me wrong: I’ve been a member for a very long time of MoveOn, and I love the group. I’ve also given them thousands of dollars I can’t afford to give, and I have every intention of continuing to do so. But I happened to notice that there is one set of major issues missing from this list.* Care to guess what it is? Three hints:
1. The Democrats did their best to try to ignore it during the 2004 elections.
2. The Democrats are still doing their level best to sidestep the issue because so many of them behaved like fools from the beginning, and are still doing so.
3. The issue begins with “I” and ends with “raq.”
And there can be no list of “big, positive, goals” that doesn’t meet this issue head on. “Global leadership through diplomacy” – you gotta be joking. That makes “Cumbayah” sound like a thoughtful plan.
I know what they’re trying to do – come up with something we’re all “fer” and not just always be “a’gin.” However, we’re living in a time when our tax dollars are being used to prosecute a thoroughly illegal and pointless war which has included the wholesale murder and torture of innocents. To pretend otherwise is stupid; Iraq must be addressed. Directly. And MoveOn is one of the few organizations in a position to do so and actually have a chance to hold a few feet to the fire. Not much, but some.
Ezra took Jonah Goldberg to task for his egregious Gore trivia column this week-end but I don’t think he goes far enough. Jonah clearly thought this would be an entertaining riff for his little circle jerk to giggle over as they sipped their frappucinos, but I think it’s actually a perfect example of the symbiosis between the wingnut noise machine and the robotic mainstream media, which Jonah Goldberg (!) now embodies.
The “Gore is a crazy liar” meme just pops out naturally, as does the speculation about the Clintons’ sex lives or the idea that Dean is a screaming freak. These are established GOP narratives that the lazy media, both right and mainstream, just pull out of mothballs for their own amusement and I’m not sure it isn’t too late to stop them. I’m frankly a bit stunned they still feel comfortable doing it what with all the death and destruction of the last five years, but it’s quite obvious they have done no introspection whatsoever. If, after all that’s happened, the media can slip so effortlessly into both the Clenis and Crazy Gore memes without even a moments pause, then a bold new strategy is required.
As a card carrying member of the rightwing noise machine Goldberg is very aware that trivializing Democrats is helpful to his cause. His harpy mother made a career out of it. And he is also aware that ridicule and cheesy gossip are very effective ways to make liberals’ appear to be insubstantial and beside the point. It gets people’s attention in ways that other forms of criticisms don’t. The cartoonizing of Democratic politicians is one of their most effective tools and we’ve made a grave error in not better understanding it and using the same methods to equalize the playing field.
Here on the blogs we have some masterful voices of ridicule and Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert are liberal heroes for the same reason. Wr have tons of biting, dizzyingly precise take-down artists on our side. But none of these themes seem to capture the mainstream media as do the wingnut themes and I have concluded that it is because they are too sophisticated. Just like Goldberg and his frappucino sipping sycophants, we too entertain ourselves with this stuff. But unlike them, we only entertain ourselves. They entertain the press.
The right specializes in schoolyard taunts and sleazy gossip because they must attract the stupid vote in order to get elected and that’s the only humor stupid voters understand. But it’s also because it’s what the media prefers — they too have to attract the masses.
We have tried their comic book insult method on occasion, but it has always seemed to backfire. The Republicans, having shrewdly capitalized inherent rightwing insecurity, are remarkably successful at parrying. My favorite was this:
Dean: “You think people can work all day and then pick up their kids at child care or wherever and get home and still manage to sandwich in an eight-hour vote? Well Republicans, I guess can do that. Because a lot of them have never made an honest living in their lives.”
The right went into a full-on screaming frenzy over that. It was as if Dean had said the Republicans eat children for lunch. They went nuts, claiming that you should never insult average voters. Many Democrats agreed that it was clumsy and crude to put it that way. But put the word liberal or Democrat in there and see if it works a little bit better:
“You think people can work all day and then pick up their kids at child care or wherever and get home and still manage to sandwich in an eight-hour vote? Well liberals, I guess can do that. Because a lot of them have never made an honest living in their lives.”
I don’t know about you, but I’ve heard that kind of thing thousands of times from every strata of the right’s hierarchy. Bashing rank and file liberals is so common that you don’t even have to make the explicit argument anymore — you just say it with an appropriate sneer and everyone gets the picture. Of course, some on the right do enjoy spelling it out:
Here at the Spawn of Satan convention in Boston, conservatives are deploying a series of covert signals to identify one another, much like gay men do. My allies are the ones wearing crosses or American flags. The people sporting shirts emblazened with the “F-word” are my opponents. Also, as always, the pretty girls and cops are on my side, most of them barely able to conceal their eye-rolling.
[…]
As for the pretty girls, I can only guess that it’s because liberal boys never try to make a move on you without the UN Security Council’s approval. Plus, it’s no fun riding around in those dinky little hybrid cars. My pretty-girl allies stick out like a sore thumb amongst the corn-fed, no make-up, natural fiber, no-bra needing, sandal-wearing, hirsute, somewhat fragrant hippie chick pie wagons they call “women” at the Democratic National Convention.
And it’s not just the cranks and the professional provocateurs like Coulter. Remember this?
U.S. Sen. Trent Lott today told an enthusiastic Neshoba County Fair crowd that Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry is “a French-speaking socialist from Boston, Massaschusetts, who is more liberal than Ted Kennedy.”
Imagine if Ted Kennedy had used similar stereotyping and said “George Bush is a slow-talking hillbilly from the old confederacy who is more racist than Strom Thurmond.” Do you even want to think about the uproar? (And has any Democratic politican in recent years said anything close to that?)
Lott’s remark got big laughs down in Mississippi. And I have little doubt that it got big laughs in press rooms all over the country. I don’t recall anyone but a few bloggers being a bit insulted by his comment.
Certainly, New England didn’t rise up in high dudgeon and demand that Lott retract his comment. That’s partially because the phrase “Massachusetts liberal” is now simple shorthand for cowardly jerk-off and people in Massachusetts seem to have resigned themselves to it. (Birthplace of the American revolution be damned. Only the secesssion is to be revered as an inviolable symbol of our heroic heritage these days.)
If someone from Massachusetts had said anything, they would have been told to lighten up. It’s only a little gentle ribbing. God you Democrats are a bunch of frail little wusses. How can you protect America? Meanwhile, you’re walking on the fighting side of Trent if you go after him with stereotypical taunts about southern culture. They can play into all these subterranean psychological currents, but nobody else can. Works great. For them.
We could play their game too, but it’s very difficult for liberals over the age of twenty to get in touch with their inner seventh grade asshole. I’m not sure why, but we seem to prefer a more subtle form of humor. I suspect it could be because of this:
An investigation by Simone Shamay-Tsoory and colleagues shows that the ability to understand sarcasm depends on a carefully orchestrated sequence of complex cognitive skills in specific parts of the brain.
Dr Shamay-Tsoory, a psychologist at the Rambam Medical Centre in Haifa and the University of Haifa, said: “Sarcasm is related to our ability to understand other people’s mental state. It’s not just a linguistic form, it’s also related to social cognition.”
The research revealed that areas of the brain that decipher sarcasm and irony also process language, recognise emotions and help us understand social cues.
“Understanding other people’s state of mind and emotions is related to our ability to understand sarcasm,” she said.
[…]
The study showed that people with damage in the prefrontal lobe struggled to pick out sarcasm. The others, including people with similar damage to other parts of the brain, were able to correctly place the sharp-tongued words into context.
The prefrontal lobe is known to be involved in pragmatic language processes and complex social cognition. The ventromedial section is linked to personality and social behaviour.
Dr Shamay-Tsoory said the loss of the volunteers’ ability to understand irony was a subtle consequence of their brain damage, which produced behaviour similar to that seen in people with autism
“They are still able to hold and understand a conversation. Their problem is to understand when people talk in indirect speech and use irony, idioms and metaphors because they take each sentence literally. They just understand the sentence as it is and can’t see if your true meaning is the opposite of your literal meaning.”
Now, I would hesitate to say that the right does not understand irony and therefore, are brain damaged. That would be very rude. Still, you have to admit that this proves my point:
A good sign that Tom DeLay doesn’t have the facts on his side: the top source for his latest defense against his critics is Stephen Colbert.
This morning, DeLay’s legal defense fund sent out a mass email criticizing the movie “The Big Buy: Tom DeLay’s Stolen Congress,” by “Outfoxed” creator Robert Greenwald.
[…]
DeLay thinks Colbert is so persuasive, he’s now featuring the full video of the interview at the top of the legal fund’s website. And why not? According to the email, Greenwald “crashed and burned” under the pressure of Colbert’s hard-hitting questions, like “Who hates America more, you or Michael Moore?”
Apparently the people at DeLay’s legal fund think that Colbert is actually a conservative. Or maybe they’re just that desperate for supporters.
This is not surprising to me. You can tell when some of the rightwingers go on the show that they don’t know what they are dealing with. They suspect that something is up because of the audience, but they really don’t get it. “Their problem is to understand when people talk in indirect speech and use irony, idioms and metaphors because they take each sentence literally.”
I have also long suspected that the media doesn’t know that Stewart and Colbert are satirizing them as well. They get the part about the politicians. everybody makes fun of them. But they don’t see that the entire premise of the show is that TV news people and pundits are idiots. It explains why more than few of them weren’t quite sure what to make of Colbert’s “partisan” speech at the White House correspondents dinner.
They operate on the same seventh grade level as the Republicans. Here’s Joe Klein:
SCARBOROUGH: You know, it’s interesting you say that. If — of course, if Hillary Clinton were to be elected and then re-elected, you could go back to 1980, and there would have been a Bush or Clinton as president or vice president from 1980 to two thousand — I guess it would be 2016.
KLEIN: Gag me with a spoon.
I rest my case.
What do we do about it? I don’t know. But we can’t pretend that the press’ willingness to run with this puerile crapola for their own amusement doesn’t hurt us. We would like to stop them by appealing to their better natures, but that hasn’t exactly worked out. And now they are behaving like shocked little schoolmarms that the left is “angry” about what they’ve done. It appears that no matter what happens — even Armageddon apparently — they are going to run with the breathless, sophomoric Democratic narrative the Republicans created. And they are too powerful to ignore.
So perhaps we should think about how to give them what they want: a Republican narrative that appeals to their seventh grade sensibilities. I throw this out there for you to discuss. (I’m going to have to have an aspirin and coke and listen to “Last Train To Clarksville” before I can properly get into the mood.)
Chris Bowers writes about one of my favorite subjects today: American tribal identity.
Over the past year and a half, I have slowly developed an argument that the electorate is, in general, non-ideological, not interested in policy, and generally unmoved by the day-to-day minutia of political events that, within the blogosphere, are treated as cataclysmic events. Sure, most people hold general political beliefs, but in general national voting habits are motivated by something else–something more basic. As we look for ways to motivate voters in November, we need to remember the powerful role that identity plays in political decision-making. As progressives, we shrug off concepts such as the “battle of civilizations,” but if you look closely at demographic data, maybe it is a battle of civilizations taking place after all. We may very well be living in an era of identity politics. Who knows, maybe every era of American politics is an era of identity politics.
I think the evidence is overwhelming that it is. He reproduces one of those great maps that break down everybody by something or other and like most of them, it ends up showing the south as being a homogenous region surrounded by a hodgepodge of different things everywhere else. In this case it’s religion, but it could be anything, including electoral results or sociological indicators. It’s just a fact that the south has a very strong regional identity of its own. And I don’t think the rest of the country is quite like it. That divide has been with us since the beginning and it far transcends any mommy/daddy party dichotomy.
I watched the country music awards the other night and saw what looked like a typical bunch of glammed up pop stars like you’d see on any of these awards shows. Lots of cowboy hats, of course, but the haircuts, the clothes, the silicone bodies were not any different from any other Hollywood production. But the songs were not. There are plenty of Saturday night honky tonk fun and straightforward gospel style religious and patriotic tunes. But there is a strain of explicit cultural ID that wends through all of them.
Gretchen Wilson and Merle Haggard’s song “Politically Uncorrect” perfectly captures the sense of exceptionalism and specialness of southern culture:
I’m for the low man on the totem pole And I’m for the underdog God bless his soul And I’m for the guys still pulling third shift And the single mom raisin’ her kids I’m for the preachers who stay on their knees And I’m for the sinner who finally believes And I’m for the farmer with dirt on his hands And the soldiers who fight for this land
Chorus:
And I’m for the Bible and I’m for the flag And I’m for the working man, me and ol’ hag I’m just one of many Who can’t get no respect Politically uncorrect
(Merle Haggard) I guess my opinion is all out of style (Gretchen Wilson) Aw, but don’t get me started cause I can get riled And I’ll make a fight for the forefathers plan (Merle Haggard) And the world already knows where I stand
Repeat Chorus
(Merle Haggard) Nothing wrong with the Bible, nothing wrong with the flag (Gretchen Wilson) Nothing wrong with the working man me & ol’ hag We’re just some of many who can’t get no respect Politically uncorrect (Merle Haggard)
Now that’s identity. I emphasized the “can’t get no respect” part because I think that’s key, as I have written many times before. The belief that these ideas are particular to this audience, that they stand alone as being politically incorrect and are “out of style” for holding them, is a huge cultural identifier. And it’s held in opposition to some “other” (presumably someone like me) who is believed not to care about any of those things — particularly the welfare of the common man.
Bowers writes:
Motivating voters and pulling off a landslide election will require a gut-level change of attitude about the two parties among millions of Americans. For all of the great policies everyone will suggest Democrats to run on this fall, ultimately winning will be based just as much on how Americans view their identity in relation to the image of the two coalitions as anything else. We need to avoid falling into the wonk trap of assuming that people are motivated by policy details. It is the identity, stupid. We need to explore ways to motivate voters for progressive causes with that in mind.
The conservative southern coalition has a very clear sense of identity. They always have. I would suggest that back in the day the New England and Midwestern cultural identifiers were pretty solidly Main Street bourgeois — if you made it your kids got to go to college and you got to join the chamber of commerce and the country club. But that’s no longer the case. The non-southern Party appears to exist mainly as a repository of opposition to conservative policies. Is that true?
Perhaps the big question is this: If you could write a country song about Blue State identity, what would the lyrics say?
Media Matters has determined that the alleged “concern” about this woman Big Bill (the 60 year old quadruple bypass survivor) is supposed to be schtupping comes from one year old Globe Magazine cover story:
Healy offered no specific reasons for this purported interest among “prominent Democrats” aside from the amount of time the Clintons spent apart, a mention of a decade-old affair, and a reference to year-old “concern[]” over a “tabloid photograph showing Mr. Clinton leaving B.L.T. Steak in Midtown Manhattan late one night after dining with a group that included Belinda Stronach, a Canadian politician.” Healy continued: “The two were among roughly a dozen people at a dinner, but it still was enough to fuel coverage in the gossip pages.”
It was also enough to fuel a front-page New York Times article, and the rapt attention of the Washington press corps, as Media Matters has documented.
Healy did not identify the “tabloid” in question, but he seems to be referring to the Globe magazine, which in the spring of 2005 ran a headline about Clinton and Stronach that read “Bill caught with blonde AGAIN! New divorce battle with Hillary.”
The New York Times is literally circulating rumors from the Globe and the giggling schoolmarms of the DC press corps are eating it up. Ok. Fine.
But as Jane pointed out the other night, and Media Matters notes today, the Globe has another shocking cover story up right now, and one that should be of grave concern to the screeching magpies:
Has anyone informed David Broder and Chris Matthews of this development? Not only isn’t the president sleeping with the first lady, he’s drinking again. I am very “concerned.”
There is a lively debate going on in the blogosphere about whether the FBI should be allowed to raid a congressman’s office. I will let others make the legal and philosophical arguments. I would just offer this from the Church Committee files:
The historical backround of political abuse of the FBI involves at least three dimensions. The first is the Bureau’s subsurvience to the Presidency, its willingness to carry our White House requests without question. When L. Patrick Gray as Acting FBI Director destroyed documents and gave FBI reports to Presidential aides whom the FBI should have been investigating after the Watergate break-in, he just carried to the extreme an established practice of service to the White House. The other side of the practice was the Bureau’s volunteering political intelligence to its superiors, not in response to any specific request. And the third historical dimension was the FBI”s concerted effort to promote its public image and discredit its critics.
[…]
The committee staff found in these “O” and C” files (“Official and Confidential”) such special memoranda on … all the members of the Senate Subcommittee chaired by Senator Long which threatened to investigate the FBI in the mid-1960’s. Some of these “name check” reports and special memoranda contained derogatory information about his wife. The reports on members of the Long Committee were compiled in a briefing book, with tabs on each senator.
[…]
In 1965, the FBI declined a request of the Justice Department Criminal division to “wire” a witness in the investigation of former Johnson senate aide Bobby Baker. Although the FBI refused on grounds that there was not adequate security, the Criminal Division had the Bureau of Narcotics in the Treasury department “wire” the witness as a legitimate alternative. When the Baker trial began in 1967 this became known. Presidential aide Marvin Watson told the FBI that President Johnson was quite exercized, and the FBI was ordered to conduct a discrete “run-down” on the head of the Criminal Division in 1965 and four persons in Treasury and the Narcotic Bureaus, including specifically any associations with former Attorney General Robert Kennedy.
[…]
At the request of President Johnson made directly to FBI executive Cartha Deloach, the FBI passed purely political intelligence about United States Senators to the White house which was obtained as a by-product of otherwise legitimate national security electronic surveillance of foreign intelligence targets. The practice also continued at the request of Mr. H.R. Haldeman.
That is just a tiny bit of the Church Committee summary of the historical political abuses perpetrated by the FBI through the mid-70’s. It was bipartisan, which is why I chose to highlight the incident with Johnson.
I am quite sure that Congressman Jefferson is nobody I want to defend (for his politics and much as his criminality.) But the FBI and the executive branch have a long sordid history of using their power for political ends. (Even Hoover never believed they could raid a congressman’s office, however.)
Recently, the FBI’s conservative culture has led to some in the bureau covertly helping Republicans as we saw during the Clinton years. Convicted spy Robert Hanssen had a relationship with Robert Novak that seemed to be based upon his political loathing of Janet Reno, although as with so many of these cases, it’s hard to tell what motivates individuals. But history shows that the FBI can be used by any party for nefarious purposes which is bad enough and requires constant vigilance and oversight. When it is used for partisan reasons directly against the congress you have a problem of an even greater dimension.
The reason to be against this is political and constitutional, not legal. It’s entirely possible that the warrant they got was proper and that their cause is just. And I have no doubt that Hastert had a hissy fit and got Bush to seal the documents to cover his own ample ass. But the bigger issue is something that someone wrote in an email a couple of days ago: This Republican Justice Department, led by a lifetime Bush loyalist and good friend to Karl Rove now has every Democratic strategy memo that ever came across Congressman Jefferson’s desk. Trust ’em?
The New York Times is verifying that the Pentagon now acknowledges that a massacre took place at Haditha. In fact, they are briefing members of congress on it to try to keep the story from blowing up into a huge scandal on the level of Abu Ghraib.
Considering the explosion of outrage on the right against John Murtha for discussing it earlier, this concerns me:
The first official report from the military, issued on Nov. 20, said that “a U.S. marine and 15 Iraqi civilians were killed yesterday from the blast of a roadside bomb” and that “immediately following the bombing, gunmen attacked the convoy with small-arms fire.”
Military investigators have since uncovered a far different set of facts from what was first reported, partly aided by marines who are cooperating with the inquiry and partly guided by reports filed by a separate unit that arrived to gather intelligence and document the attack; those reports contradicted the original version of the marines, Pentagon officials said.
You will recall that Joseph Darby, the soldier who blew the whistle on the Abu Ghraib abuses was vilified by his neighbors. And then there was this:
He was a 24-year-old pilot flying over the Vietnamese jungle on March 16, 1968. The crew’s objective: draw Viet Cong fire from My Lai, so helicopter gunships could swoop in and take out the enemy gunners.
Thompson spotted gunfire but found no enemy fighters. He saw only American troops, who were forcing Vietnamese civilians into a ditch, then opening fire.
Thompson landed his helicopter to block the Americans, then instructed his gunner to open fire on the soldiers if they tried to harm any more villagers. Thompson and two other chopper pilots airlifted villagers to safety, and he reported the slaughter to superiors.
“We saw something going wrong, so we did the right thing and we reported it right then,” Thompson said.
The Vietnamese government estimated that more than 500 were killed.
Army Lt. William Calley Jr. was convicted in a 1971 court-martial and received a life sentence for the My Lai massacre. President Nixon reduced the sentence, and Calley served three years of house arrest.
Thompson received the prestigious Soldier’s Medal — 30 years after the fact.
His acts are now considered heroic. But for years Thompson suffered snubs and worse from those in and out of the military who considered his actions unpatriotic.
Fellow servicemen refused to speak with him. He received death threats, and walked out his door to find animal carcasses on his porch. He recalled a congressman angrily saying that Thompson himself was the only serviceman who should be punished because of My Lai.
Does anyone think that it will be any different this time?
Jane’s tending to her sick pup so I’ve got a post up over at FDL this afternoon. That is if anyone’s interested in a little more Broder bashing (with a sprinkling of Chris Matthews squealing like a blushing schoolgirl.)
Give a big shout out to Move-On and Matt Stoller for successfully turning out grassroots support for net neutrality. It just passed the House judiciary committee 20-13.
This was a real grassroots victory — until recently, it seemed like an easy gimme to the wealthy telcos. This is good news for us intrepid bloggers, but it’s good news for the internet in general. Much like the FEC regulations that we managed to stave off earlier my support for net neutrality not based upon a general disdain for regulation. Regulation is often a necessary thing. But this medium is just too new, too important and too democratizing to allow corporate interests to sneak in the back door with phony concerns designed simply to enhance their profits at others’ expense.
If the internet needs regulating in some presently unimagined way, I’m sure we will all see it. Right now, if it ain’t broke don’t fix it.
