London Review of Books: “Lone gunman not the exception”
Again one thing that is nice about having many different people on Facebook is that I get a broader view of what is being said around the web. In this case comes from the website called London Review of Books. In this article by Tariq Ali called “The Not So Lone Gunman” goes to paint every Solider as another crazy GI gun spree waiting to happen.
In most colonial wars people are arrested, tortured at random and killed. Not even a façade of legality is considered necessary. The ‘lone’ American gunman who butchered innocents in Afghanistan in the early hours of Sunday morning was far from being an exception. For this is not the act of a deranged maniac killing schoolchildren in an American city. The ‘lone’ killer is a sergeant in the US army. He’s not the first and won’t be the last to kill like this.
It seems by this being in the US Army is worse then being a deranged maniac killer. Good to know. It gets better.
The Russian occupation of Afghanistan also witnessed ‘lone gunmen’ behaving in this fashion, but better-educated than many of their US counterparts they would write about the whys and wherefores in anguished diaries after they had been withdrawn
Yep lets through in the dumb GI meme while we are at it.
The ‘enemy’ is not hidden. It is the public. So wiping out women and children is part of the war. Helicopter gunships, bomber jets and drones are more effective killers than ‘lone’ gunmen.
So were we have been conducting a massive kill all women and children campaign since 2001? I thing that anyone that ever did a Combat Air Patrol over Afghanistan would be quick to disagree. But he don’t let reality disprove another baby killer meme. I am not even sure how to respond to the last paragraph outside of profanity. I wonder if anyone here can do any better.
So what is to be done? Get out now. These wars that dehumanise the ‘enemy’ also dehumanise the citizens of warmongering nations. We are made to live in a state of ignorance, but by our apathy contribute to making sure that such a state continues indefinitely. The individual gunman will soon disappear from our thoughts and we can then settle down to the routine killings that take place every day, carried out collectively on the orders of politicians that we elect.
Category: Antiwar crowd, Foreign Policy, Terror War
There has been so much jackassery today that I don’t know what to say about this particular jackass.
Tariq Ali is an infamously reactionary jack off with nothing to actually say but plenty of knowledge of which memes to hit upon to garner attention and make the sale. I used to take quite a bit of pleasure from watching Christopher Hitchens simply dismantle him. Youtube is full of such episodes for those who don’t mind sitting through some serious bloviating.
I wonder if Mr. Ali has the same opinion of the “lone wolves” who keep wanting to bomb things American…. Are they, too, part of a larger problem? Perhaps its a problem Tariq Ali is also an adherent to.
I have to wonder, how does this assclown know that Russian soldiers wrote about “lone gunman experiences” in diaries afterwards?
A little concerned about rpts that Marines in Panetta’s audience had to give up their arms before his address. Same meme operating there? What caused this, at a time when our troops are so vulnerable?
The US’ defense of South Korea was a colonial war?? Good to know.
Street–considering that most of the Soviet draftees were straight off the farm and barely able to pick the shit from their toes, let alone write literate tomes, and probably 25 percent of our enlisted force has at least an AA or AS, yeah, I’m calling bullshit there.
I take issue with the statement that Russians are “better educated” at any level than Americans. The proof is in what they’ve done with their country. Russia has long had a high literacy rate, but their people were, and still act like, serfs.
Their military may have a thicker lot of advanced degrees, although I’d really like to see a numerical comparison. If that’s true, it could merely be a sign that they have too many officers.
See this is the problem. We could go hog wild lighting up everything and everyone. we certainly have the power and capability to kill EVERY. SINGLE. PERSON. in Afghanistan. It wouldn’t really be that hard either.
We don’t. Why is that? We sit and take casualties when we by rights should call in an airstrike. We build clinics and treat the locals. We build schools.
I would seriously like to point out AGAIN That our enemies make ever single misstep we make, look like a bunch of kids playing war in the park. Not just the acid in the face of school girls, but making whole families disappear. Torture for no reason. I mean if we ever declassified half the debriefs we do, people would vomit upon hearing the details.
Valerie beat me to it. The old Soviet Union operated at two extremes: haves and have nots, educated and, uh…not so much. Just like many, many college educated, white collar types avoided military service in Viet Nam, so their Soviet counterparts found ways to avoid Afghanistan. What’s more, higher education in the Soviet Union also operated two planes. There was the genuinely good university education, and then there were the state-sponsored degree mills. That’s why it pays to know not only that a Russian got a degree, but *where* he got it.
Ultimately, Valerie made the point. Even if the serfs can and do read, they aren’t acting like edumacated people. They lived like peasants (and nouveau riche) before Communism, during it; and they still do after it.
That would be “lets ‘throw’ (not ‘through’) in the dumb GI meme while we are at it.” and “So where have we been conducting”(not ‘So were we have been conducting’) Spork. 🙂
You know, if we are going to get beat up as brutal oppressors anyway, we might as well give them what they want and actually show them how well we can oppress if we truly wanted to.
Many different points have been clearly addressed above, so I’ll avoid those. The only thing I’d point out here is this: if American troops ever did unleash the “slaughter” they get accused of so often, the world would never forget it.
Perhaps a refresher in some of our Civil War engagements would remind the world of what it looks like when Americans decide to do REAL “body counts” on a battlefield.
Or look at the results of the strategic bombing campaigns in World War II.
Everyone bitches and complains about the lives lost at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, but never consider the REAL bloodbath that would have resulted had we actually invaded the Japanese home islands.
Even the million-plus casualty figures for Operation Downfall omitted Navy casualties and few went further than 60-90 days in.