- "We were told specifically that if there were women
and children to kill them."
-
- While the lumbering giants of the American media make
their clumsy bows of obeisance to the presidential paymaster filling their
corporate goodie bags with tax cut candy and merger massage oil, a few
snippets of unsalted truth about the real world continue to spill from
the croker sacks of the lean and hungry provincial papers.
-
- Last week, it was the Savannah Morning News unearthing
an attempted terrorist bombing by a U.S. soldier in the gaterous moral
swamp of Jeb Bush's Florida. This week, it's the Ithaca Journal in upstate
New York, bringing news of Big Brother Georgie's old-fashioned approach
to warfare:
-
- Ordering soldiers to kill women and children.
-
- This revelation--entirely unremarked by the larded lords
of the Fourth Estate--came in a homely profile of young Army Private Matt
Guckenheimer, just returned to the bosom of his family after a tour of
service in Afghanistan. While retailing some of his experiences during
the much ballyhooed "Operation Anaconda," Guckenheimer artlessly
spilled what was surely meant to be a secret order from his superiors.
-
- "We were told there were no friendly forces,"
Guckenheimer said. "If there was anybody there, they were the enemy.
We were told specifically that if there were women and children to kill
them."
-
- Let that sink in for a moment: American soldiers were
told to kill women and children. "Specifically." To kill a child.
To put a bullet in the brain of, let's say, a two-year old girl. To hold
the barrel of a rifle to her tiny temple and pull the trigger. To watch
as the tender plate of her skull, the delicate bones of her face, her large
bright inquisitive eyes were all obliterated in a burst of red mist. "We
were told specifically to kill them." "Women and children."
"To kill them."
-
- So that's the kind of warfare being waged by those notorious
two cowards, George W. Bush and Dick Cheney. When their own generation
was on the firing line, in Vietnam, both men ardently supported the war--but
disdained to fight in it. For his part, Cheney was too busy with his long
bootlicking rise to power: "I had other priorities," he has loftily
proclaimed.
-
- Meanwhile, Bush's daddy got his drink-addled little boy
a cushy stateside berth in the Texas National Guard--but even then, Junior
couldn't stick it.
-
- He bugged out for an entire year of his duty--desertion
in wartime, a capital offense, if you're not rich and well-connected. Fortunately,
his service records for that period were "scrubbed" by General
Daniel James, former head of the Texas National Guard, who is now head
of the entire nation's Air National Guard -- courtesy of his appointment
by a grateful
-
- George W. Bush.
-
- Now these two armchair warriors, Bush and Cheney, ensconced
safely behind the greatest phalanx of personal protection ever seen in
history, are sending out a new generation of young people to kill and die.
Like their predecessors in the Vietnam War, they are twisting the faith
and idealism of patriotic young soldiers and turning them into instruments
of murder.
-
- And for what? Certainly not to "bring the perpetrators
of September 11 to justice," the ostensible purpose of the war. Those
perpetrators are still roaming free--and are even more dangerous than ever,
according to Cheney himself. No, the main reason why Private Guckenheimer
and his comrades are being ordered to murder women and children could be
found last week in a headline buried in yet another obscure province of
the American Empire--a brief business story from the BBC:
-
- "Afghan Pipeline Given Go-Ahead."
-
- And there is more of this to come; much, much more. For
even as Private Guckenheimer was making his quiet revelations, the Commander-in-Chief
was loudly proclaiming a brand-new military doctrine for the United States:
Sneak attacks--like Pearl Harbor, like September 11.
-
- Speaking at West Point military academy, Bush first praised
the soldiers in Afghanistan "who have fought on my orders." (***"We
were told specifically that if there were women and children to kill them."***)
He then announced that from henceforth, the United States will "impose
preemptive, unilateral military force when and where it chooses,"
the Washington Post reports.
-
- For the first time in its history, America is now openly
committed to offensive military aggression against any perceived threat
designated by its leaders, the unelected White House occupant told the
cadets. Bush said that "60 or more nations" presently lie under
this dread edict--all potential targets of his "kill the women and
children" orders.
-
- What's more, Bush said this new military bellicosity
will be accompanied by aggressive diplomacy aimed at forcing other nations
to adopt American values--that is, the Enron-style "crony capitalism"
foisted on the United States by a corrupt elite and their political bagmen.
Bush called this pustulant system--now suppurating before our eyes, as
corporation after corporation, including Cheney's own Halliburton, are
caught cooking their books--"the single surviving model of human progress."
-
- So there you have it. Just like bin Laden--another unelected
leader who claims divine sanction for his actions--Bush will send his forces
to strike without warning at anyone he believes is an enemy. Just like
bin Laden, Bush considers innocent women and children to be legitimate
targets of his holy wrath. Just like bin Laden, he seeks to impose his
own limited, barbaric worldview on other nations, for his own power and
profit.
-
- What quadrant of hell is hot enough for such men?
-
- Post Script
-
- Guckenheimer has since qualified his disturbing revelation.
Perhaps shaken at seeing his words in cold print (or shaken ***by*** someone
who saw his words in cold print), Guckenheimer wrote a letter to the Ithaca
Journal modifying his remarks. He now says the soldiers were ordered to
kill only those women and children who showed unspecified manifestations
of "hostile intent."
-
- The orders did note that even "very young children"
(of unspecified age) were being trained as soldiers by the heathen Mohammedans,
and so could not be "just dismissed as noncombatants," said Guckenheimer.
"But this does not mean we were ordered to kill noncombatants such
as babies."
-
- Well, thank God for that. It is indeed a saving grace
that U.S. ground forces were actually not ordered to kill babies. That
would be a very serious breach of military protocol - everyone knows the
killing of babies and other innocent parties is reserved for the launchers
of "smart bombs," "daisy cutters," B-52s, CIA drones
and other purveyors of faceless, long-range death.
-
- Glad we could clear that up.
-
- Chris Floyd is a columnist for the Moscow Times. He can
be contacted at cfloyd72@hotmail.com
-
- http://www.counterpunch.org/floyd0611.html
|
