Kossacks, you know the tale of the Ancient Mariner, the one who shot the innocent albatross and who brought down a curse on ship and crew because he offended the spirit who bideth by himself in the land of mist and snow, (who) loved the bird that loved the man who shot him with his bow. For this senseless act of violence, the plagued crew hung the dead albatross around the mariner’s neck. And there it stayed until the mariner redeemed himself and began his journey home.
Having offended High Heaven with deeds of gratuitous and unspeakable violence it is highly possible that the albatross of the "the greatest blunder in US history" can never be removed by our own efforts. The weight of all the crimes against humanity, history, law and heaven that comprise the so-called Iraq/Afghan war will require more than earthly strength to lift up and off our neck. Our situation is a replay of a Greek tragedy where blinded by invincible arrogance (Bush) or pathetic cowardice (Yoo) our every act further seals our doom . The BAILOUT we need is from the HEART not the BANK because all the banks in the world could not pay for the financial and spiritual debts incurred by the so-called War on Terror in the Mid-East. A casual read of History tells us that all debts of this kind are paid one way or the other.
In his book A Study of History, under the section "Suicidalness of Militarism" Arnold Toynbee describes the decline of the Assyrian Empire by saying, "their ruin came because their aggressiveness exhausted them- besides rendering them intolerable to their neighbors." In this regard, our reckless desecration of the sacred sites and cities of Mesopotamia, the cradle of civilization, as documented in the "Rape of Mesopotamia" and "Catastrophe" cannot but remind us with profound irony of the tragedy "The Persians" by Aeschylus. In "The Persians", Aeschylus describes how Persia, the wealthiest and greatest power then on earth, blinded by pride and arrogance desecrated Athens in their attack on mainland Greece only to be brought to utter defeat by the wily Athenians in the historic battle of Salamis. May we, in this dangerous moment, heed the advice of General Odom (Victory is not an Option) and Captain Hoh by referring to these immortal words of Aeschylus on the downfall of Persia: "For Delusion, with semblance of fair intent, lureth man astray into her snares, whence it is not possible scatheless to escape...For presumptuous pride when it has burgeoned, bears as its fruit a crop of calamity, whence it reaps a harvest of tears."
For a crop of calamity born of presumptuous pride try the following:
When I think that I had some input into the creation of this product (shorting the subprime loans) -- which by the way is a product of pure intellectual masturbation, the type of thing which you invent telling yourself: 'Well, what if we created a "thing," which has no purpose, which is absolutely conceptual and highly theoretical and which nobody knows how to price?' -- it sickens the heart to see it shot down in mid-flight.... It's a little like Frankenstein turning against his own inventor." -- Goldman Sachs trader Tourre wrote in a 2007 email.
"Reports that say that something hasn't happened are always interesting to me, because as we know, there are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns -- the ones we don't know we don't know. It is unknowable how long that conflict [the war in Iraq] will last. It could last six days, six weeks. I doubt six months." Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld in February 2003.
While Secretary of Defense Dr Rumsfeldstein was amusing the nation with these reflections on epistemology, he was secretly authorizing torture to invent an eternal justification for war: FEAR. And he succeeded beyond measure, because the six weeks dream war IRAQI FREEDOM has morphed into endless war for ENDURING PROFIT. And when it comes to making money, Wall Street’s Tourre has nothing on the power and productive capacity of Rumsfeld’s dreams. Problem is though, these dreams have to be paid for and that’s when we start harvesting ENDLESS TEARS. They promised us freedom and profit and instead gave us tears: tears of widows, of orphans, of families ruined and displaced, of veterans forever scarred, of loved ones forever bereaved and of sacred cities forever desecrated.
Hey America, you listening? Stop listening to the deceivers and start looking at the harvest -- War and Wall Street greed -- as it slowly turns against ship and us, the crew.
And then listen to the Ancient Mariner in Coleridge’s rhyme: "An orphan’s curse would drag to hell a spirit from on high, but oh more horrible than that is a curse in a dead man’s eye."
Listen to the 5 million orphans that were created by our invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan. You hear that America? Listen again carefully: 5 million. Feel more secure?
Listen to the Iraqi Good Samaritan and the Reuter’s reporter that lie dead in the road and the Afghan family dead in their beds. They can’t talk but there is something in their eyes. The truth about the war.
The murdered Good Samaritan left two more orphans to add to the 5 million.
Listen to all the orphans and look into all the dead men’s eyes America and think about coming home.
Murder, spying, war profiteering, invasion, torture have grown into a cancer that left untreated, must, like any good cancer, keep growing whether we like it or not to the bone and marrow of our republic.
An illegal invasion and occupation based, as EVERYONE now agrees, on lies, is not war. It is a crime. Every single rationale for our Orwellian preemptive war has proved to be FALSE. When the mission itself is propaganda, and nobody knows who the enemy is, there are bound to be countless murders and assaults of innocents at weddings, at checkpoints, at Abu Ghraib at home searches or at transit. There is not a living soul in Iraq or Afghanistan who does not have an acquaintance, relative or friend that has not been unjustly killed, maimed for life, injured or impoverished by our unjustified and senseless invasion of Iraq. Crimes have a way of sticking around until their authors are brought to justice. And Nuremberg crimes have a way of really sticking around. That’s why Rove and the Cheneys have been working so hard to convince us that terrorism is the number one problem and torture the number one solution. They don’t want to be put on trial because if they ever were they would be convicted by overwhelming evidence.
The latest revelations about the murders of the Good Samaritan and the Reuters reporter scream for RESPONSIBILITY and ACCOUNTABILITY. Though the soldiers in the Apache helicopter pulled the trigger, it is not our soldiers who bear the blame in all this. It is first and foremost those who lied us into this unjust war: The Cheneys, Rumsfelds, Yoos, Bushes, Wolfowitzs, Addingtons, and their cheerleaders. They are cowards who hide behind the troops. And they will remain in the shadows, until we have ACCOUNTABILITY through investigations, truth commissions or trials. Until that day we all bear the shame of having turned Iraq and Afghanistan into a wasteland. Think about it! A Good Samaritan stops to help a wounded traveler and is gunned down by those so consumed with fear for their security that a simple act of kindness becomes a threat. An Afghan family is murdered in the quiet of night because even the sleep of INNOCENCE is dangerous to the FEARFUL.
Kindness or benevolence (Confucius) has been recognized by all Saints, Sages, Leaders and Poets as the key virtue that binds and forms any civilized community. Because our presence in Iraq and Afghanistan is based on power not justice, we are literally killing kindness with machine guns ("I went down to the market where all the women shop/I pulled out my machete and I begin to chop/I went down to the park where all the children play/I pulled out my machine gun and I begin to spray"), and thus undermining any chance of promoting security based on trust, innocence, and absence of FEAR.
And now we find out that most of the so-called worst of the worst terrorists held in Guantanamo were completely innocent. But to terrorize America into war Bush needed terrorists so the CIA just bought them from Afghan warlords and corrupt Pakistanis and threw them into prison without any evidence, due process, or legal representation where they were tortured for years. Hey, no problem, you got to have terrorists if you are going to spend 2 trillion dollars on the War against Terror.
Folks, we are ripping ourselves apart. Our Constitution lies in shreds. At home, our polity is violence and greed. In foreign affairs we extend power by collateral murder. Our treasuries are hemorrhaging.
Unless and until we listen to all the orphans and answer the WHY in all the dead men’s eyes, the cancer will keep growing and become more virulent.
We are on the verge of becoming "corpses in armour" with our satellites, drones, helicopters and machine guns. We have power to kill innocence abroad and criminalize innocence at home (Jesselyn Raddack, Kadhr, Arizona, Siegelman, Chacounne) but we don’t have the simple truth. To get that we need to look back before we go forward.
What’s more threatening to America’s security: mythical enemies or real orphans? 5 million of them. When you lose everything you can do anything. 5 million can do a lot.
Come home America, your enemies are not in Afghanistan, they’re right here. They are the cancerous deeds of Bush, Cheney, Rice and Rumsfeld. And they are alive and well and spreading. They need to be excised by war crime trials before they spread to every cell and organ of the body politic. When Bush took America across the Rubicon of Torture, we left Justice and the Constitution on the far shore. If we don’t get back soon Arizona will look like child’s play. A man can get use to anything said Dostoevsky. Once we get use to torturing one person, the possibilities are infinite: one hundred thousand innocent civilians dead in Iraq, 2 million war widows, 5 million orphans, and hundreds of innocents killed by drones.
"The failure of the Obama administration to hold anyone accountable for the known and admitted war crimes of torture just made the acceptance of extreme acts of violence grow and harden. It also left in place the ability of Republican politicians to define an enemy (to whom) no common decency should be shown. They were more than willing to use this ability to describe Democrats and their agenda at every turn." (From SomethingtheDogSaid’s diary on fundamental cause of political violence in America.)
When we lose Justice, we lose everything:
"An orphan’s curse would drag to hell a spirit from on high, but oh more horrible than that is a curse in a dead man’s eye...Ah! well-a-day! What evil looks had I from old and young! Instead of the cross, the Albatross about my neck was hung."
The Albatross of torture and war crimes is hanging about our necks folks, and there is only one way to get it off. Justice. God’s justice or our own.
Come home America.
A final note: I believe most of questions raised in this diary can be substantially answered by two "Heart of Darkness" or "f@@k it, I'm done with it" stories from an Iraqi journalist and an American soldier, whose profound courage enabled them to get off the death ship and survive to tell their tales. The American was trained to kill civilians and refused, the Iraqi threw the shoe of truth in the face of the Leader of Lies. Their stories are on the Real News Network.