Issue: Whether 18 U.S.C. 2339B(a)(1), which prohibits the knowing provision of “any *** service, *** training, [or] expert advice or assistance,” to a designated foreign terrorist organization, is unconstitutionally vague; Whether the criminal prohibitions in 18 U.S.C. § 2339B(a)(1) on the provision of “expert advice or assistance” “derived from scientific [or] technical … knowledge” and “personnel” are unconstitutional with respect to speech that furthers only lawful, nonviolent activities of proscribed organizations.
Washington (CNN) — A bipartisan group of legislators on Thursday introduced legislation in Congress to strip citizenship from any American found to be involved in terrorism.
If the Terrorist Expatriation Act passes, an American would lose citizenship if found to have provided material support or resources to a foreign terrorist organization — as designated by the secretary of state — or participated in actions against the United States.
Sens. Joe Lieberman, I-Connecticut, and Scott Brown, R-Massachusetts, co-sponsored the bill. An identical bill is being introduced in the House by Reps. Jason Altmire, D-Pennsylvania, and Charlie Dent, R-Pennsylvania.
….
Under the new proposed bill, the Department of State would have the ability to revoke an American’s citizenship based on a person renouncing their citizenship. The individual, Lieberman stressed, would still have the right to appeal the determination at the State Department — or take it to federal court.
When asked how the State Department would make their decision, Lieberman said a person would have declare the intent to renounce their citizenship — but added that information from other sources could also “lead the state department to make that conclusion.”
Anders said the government often makes mistakes in determining a person’s involvement in terrorism. In that case, an American citizen could be rendered stateless if they do not have dual citizenship.
Stephen Vladeck, a professor of law at American University Washington College of Law, said the government defines “providing material support to terrorism” so broadly, “that really the most benign, innocent activity could subject the most harmless Americans to this extreme sanction.”
In it, I find a distinction I haven’t previously considered: the proliferation of remote warfare into nearly all conflicts. Even if not now, in forty years every nation on Earth could own a fleet of drones while the top dogs move to even more “civilized” forms of war.
My second major concern goes to the power of example that the United States is now setting with respect to the use of drones away from an acknowledged battlefield, especially in connection with targeted killings. No weapons system remains indefinitely the province of a single power. Drone technology is particularly striking in this regard, because it is not really all that sophisticated. It seems clear that other powers have this technology–Israel and Iran have each been reported to be working with it, Russia and China could obviously do so easily if they desired, and the same is probably true for Britain, France, and Germany, not to mention Japan and Taiwan, where many of the cutting-edge breakthroughs in robotics actually occur. The way America uses this technology is therefore effectively setting the rules for others. Put another way, if it’s lawful for America to employ a drone to take out an enemy in the desert of Yemen, on the coast of Somalia, in a village in Sudan or Mauretania, then it would be just as lawful for Russia, or China–or, for that matter, for Israel or Iran. What kind of world is this choice then creating? Doesn’t it invariably lead us closer to the situation in which a targeted killing will be carried out in a major metropolis of Europe or East Asia, or even the United States? And doesn’t that move us in the direction of a dark and increasingly lawless world?
After all, we do remain the world’s largest arms dealer! I strongly encourage you to read it.
I can’t imagine how much someone can get done in a hundred days being president, but I’ll say at this point Obama continues to disappoint.
A giant oil slick has been spewing out of the Gulf of Mexico towards Louisiana (still recovering from Katrina six years later), Mississippi, Alabama, and Florida. Vital fishing industries will be devastated and the ecosystem will be spoiled twice in ten years. Who’s to blame?
I’d suggest Halliburton, who just finished laying the final coats of paint on this rig before it exploded.
Lawsuits point to cementing in rig disaster
(AP) – 1 day ago
HOUSTON — Although no cause has been determined, oil services contractor Halliburton Inc. says it finished a cementing operation 20 hours before a Gulf of Mexico rig went up in flames.
Halliburton is named as a defendant in most of the more than two dozen lawsuits filed by Gulf Coast people and businesses claiming the oil spill could ruin them financially. In one lawsuit, two Louisiana shrimpers claim cementing contributed to the explosion.
Halliburton said Friday it had four workers stationed on the rig, performing several tasks, including cementing — a process of applying cement and water to a pipe used to prevent the wall of the hole from caving in during drilling.
According to a 2007 study by Minerals Management Service, cementing was a factor 18 of 39 rig blowouts in the gulf between 1992 and 2006.
The fact that after all the crookery in Iraq and Afghanistan, this monstrous vulture of a corporation is able to work on such sensitive infrastructure like oil rigs! Off the coast of our country! This is the corporation that kept on poisoning and electrocuting Our Troops, right? The guys who kept shoveling money into their deep deep pockets while Iraqi hospitals and schools collapsed in on themselves? And let’s not forget our deepest burning Patriot’s shame – New Orleans.
I can tell you Obama has disappointed me because even through Guantanamo is open, even though a secret ruthless war is being raged against the majority, Obama can’t even give Halliburton the pink slip. And their shoddy work continues to bankrupt America. Throw these guys in jail already! B-b-but how can he do that, you say. Well, a single man got them all up and encamped in our system, so one single man should be able to toss them out!
I rode the D.C. Metro last week and absorbed all the lovely lines that flow along the bridge over the Potomac and under the Pentagon. There’s something decidedly Roman about Washington D.C. If it’s not all the columns or facades of Minerva then it’s idea of immortality in all of it. There have been Romes before, but we always think this time will be different.
It’s no longer a question of “Can” but “Will”. Somewhere between the Chinese false devaluation of the yuan and our overstretched military industrial complex, things will stop churning so violently eventually. America is faced with the most sophisticated resistance of our age, something so consuming that there is little to do but give in. Those beautiful lines over the Potomac were bought and built with slave sweat and slave blood. Our food is grown with GMO seeds and then freeze-packed for our microwaves. Our cellphones contain little nuggets of pain and suffering from the Congo. Our magazine pages rip up our sexual instincts. Our children parrot the television and tug on our sleeves for more. One thing is for certain: whatever cold fire we had a hundred years ago to force our way across the globe has sputtered out.
Teddy Roosevelt claimed a White Teutonic racial superiority as what set Americans apart from the rest. My grandparents tell me it’s hard work, saving, and going without excess. We need these rationalizations to fortify our moral grounding in the world. Yet what really gave us the edge was a vast land filled with wealth and fertile soil, wrenched from its original inhabitants and cultivated by 50 million slaves. Building America took great commitment and required vast power. We built up great war machines and set them sailing in the ocean, looking to spread our cold fire elsewhere.
Now Americans don’t even have that cold fire, the ruthlessness in them to fight and take. The entitlement has filtered into every part of society, and now our hard working Teutonic compatriots are too tired from a long day of staring at screens and advertisements that it’s hard to remember what it is we’re supposed to do to keep moving forward.
The Romans had lead in the water and Dionysian orgies, but what do we have? A whole litany of vices poured down our throats the Romans couldn’t have dreamed of. It’s too late for us. The USSR’s population was ready for the crash. Decades of hard living had prepared them to survive a hostile world. Looking at the state of Russia nowadays, it’s done them little good. The life expectancy has dropped and their industry has been shattered. And America, at the pinnacle of the world, faces an obesity epidemic and has no industry left to speak of unless you work at the Pentagon.
So when you look on the grandeur of the Washington monuments and museums, do you wonder what they will look like at the end of your life? When you are old and gray, how will you explain things to your grandchildren? Apocalyptic notions have been picking up steam. Books and movies hail the end times. The case can be made that it’s always been like this, that the end times have always been near. Yet aged intellectuals openly espouse grief and concern over our future. Our money has evaporated. We’re losing the wars abroad and at home as America runs back into the comforting arms of imperial nationalism. Thinking we can punch the slot machine a few more times and be ok, our involvement in the Middle East, Africa, Asia, and South America foretells our demise. Our decaying neighborhoods in New Orleans and Detroit indicate a disastrous trajectory. When we are unable to invest domestically while at the same time unable to divest internationally… this is when we wake up and find ourselves and our national monuments too close to Rome for comfort.
Facing the idea that we may not always have an easy supply of microwaved meals and entertaining television, will we be able to learn to cook and reacquaint each other? Will America survive without imperialism? Perhaps more importantly is how hard we will fight at the end to keep ourselves from facing reality.
The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.
– Thomas Jefferson
Americans have had a nasty habit of killing each other. Ever since our inception, ours is a nation that demands Blood Sacrifice. Children are taught to read the above quote with a fondness towards their slave-owning Founding Father, but the truth is that at the center of liberty lies a gaping maw waiting for pain and death to be poured. Lynchings and slave trade, Civil War and Native American genocide… the list goes on. Political theorists often say America is more prone to fascism than to socialism when it falls on hard times. What do you think?
Recently, the tone of aggression in our country is growing more and more fascistic. Dr. Chomsky elucidates:
You can make the argument that Dr. Chomsky and others are free to express themselves in the United States and that this actually exonerates the kind of fascist speech going on in America today. However, Rosa Luxemburg lived and worked in Germany for 20 years before she was sacrificed on the alter of Nazi inception. You can never make the case that storm clouds aren’t gathering just because your intellectuals are allowed to speak their minds.
Can you listen to some of the rhetoric in America and deny there is a problem? As Dr. Chomsky warns, the “Tea-Party” activists enjoy wide popular support in America. They are being consistently egged on by major organs of news media. Like the coup orchestrators in Venezuela, it is possible that major business interests are intentionally rallying the population to water the tree of liberty with some all-nourishing patriot blood.
Unlike a George Bush, who makes his sacrifices in the slaughter of thousands in Iraq and Afghanistan, Barack Obama can not rouse the same dedication to mass destruction at this point in his presidency. The gaping maw of liberty groans in anguish and hunger. The standard bearers who bear arms openly at the soft flank of our government, upholding the principles of “our nation”, clamor for blood sacrifice.
Millions of people are listening and fear and rage are growing in their hearts. Beck even cynically eggs on the fascist dribble by citing Martin Luther King Jr.
There is no doubt that America exists as a neo-imperial state, sucking resources dry and exploiting labor all over the world. But the Tree of Liberty doesn’t just demand tyrants (enemy) blood, it also demands bloodshed from patriot (citizen) sources. Americans lunge too quickly for their guns and are too eager to fire on each other as well as the rest of the world. This feeding frenzy puts the country at the center of a draco-spiral, something that inevitably consumes itself and the rest of the host with it. Is that Liberty?
For all the movies I can list that feature stoner culture, the dangers of heroin/crack/meth, disgusting drunks, and even how bad huffing is, the drug movie genre has been sadly deprived of one important family member. What about the pills?
Imagine if every day, 10 people were violently murdered by a serial killer in the state of Florida. The same guy was running around and killing 10 people every day. I can tell you exactly what would happen. There would be a run on the gun stores and someone would be quickly voted out of office. We might even risk voting another monster like Reagan into office. Anyway, the point of this hypothetical exercise is that 10 people are being killed every day by the same psychopath: prescription drug overdose. Now, you know this isn’t antibiotics or heart disease medicine people are overdosing on. The killers are oxycontin, fentanyl, alprazolam, whatever. No matter how many people die from these drugs, nobody in charge seems to be paying attention or at least challenging their denial.
This “Man Who is Supposed to Know” can’t even get his stereotype straight. Every time I walk into a doctor’s office I’m immediately treated with suspicion if I complain of pain. All I have to do is mention the word pain and a doctor immediately treats me like a frothing drug addict. I don’t even know where to begin with this one. I’m a clean, conservatively dressed, well-spoken person. I don’t have tattoos or piercings. I’m polite. The doctor, however, sees red flags all around me. I’m hustled out of the office with a direction to “take some Advil”. Like I didn’t already know that. I don’t wander into doctor’s offices with mysterious back or joint pain, I walk in because I got in a motorcycle accident last night or need a refill for my dry socket. When actually prescribed these medications, the quantity is so low you can barely buy 10 hours without pain. Chances are: by the time I’ve come to see you, I’ve already been chugging Advil for a few days.
What victims of prescription drug addiction look like
Anyway, if someone my age wants to get high on opiates, we do it the smarter, cheaper way. We order poppy pods online or we steal from our parents. After all, I only know a handful of Americans over the age of 40 without a prescription for scheduled medication. Not only that, but they are allowed tons of refills. After a while you notice that Mom or Dad’s probably healed up from that skiing last year, so why are they still taking regular pain medication?
With the lack of discussion about this in the media, we can assume the addicts who glean their supply from doctors are at the age where they make policy decisions. That is to say, 40 and up. So a large enough percentage of our adult population is addicted to pain medication now! Why do I say that? Well, ten of them are dying every day in Florida from it! If little Jimmy doesn’t sneak in there with his pals and gobble them all down himself, it’s your run of the mill “took too many pills, drank too much booze” case.
Yet, even with these staggering numbers, we allow places like pill mills and pain clinics to do business. Why? Because we’re addicted. This makes a bad case for across-the-board drug legislation. Even when it’s regulated and prescribed by doctors, it’s still being abused to the tune of thousands of deaths a year. Perhaps a more important step could be to study the American mentality a little closer and ask ourselves why we allow things like this to happen in the first place, why everyone over 40 seems to need something for a panic attack or neck cramp. Maybe it’s living a hollow existence 16 hours a day in the office, or pushing the mop all night at Walmart. Maybe it’s the glare from your TV, cell phone, or computer screen. Perhaps there is something wrong with the American soul. Either way, we need to seriously ask ourselves why this is happening. Is it too late for someone to drag us to NA? Let’s hope not.
As we approach the first anniversary of the brutal and tragic assassination of Dr. George Tiller (May 2009), we are constantly reminded that a woman’s right to a safe and legal abortion in this country is in perpetual danger. With only a handful of doctors left in the country who are able to perform the kinds of procedures Dr. Tiller gave his life for, we need a new generation of doctors who are willing to protect women like these good doctors have. Despite death threats, terrorism, physical assaults, and even death, these brave souls have fought back simply by going to work and doing what they do best.
How American conservatives view women & their personal agency
Regardless of your personal feelings about abortion, you should support women being able to seek safe medical care. Abortions happen no matter their legality. The only difference is that women become injured and even die when not given access to safe medical care and proper facilities.
It’s yet another shame on America that our women must seek medical care behind layers of bullet-proof glass and through a crowd of vicious protesters who have no empathy for their personal situation, nor any right to judge. Sometimes these protesters become patients at the very clinics they protest against!
Only 14, she came with her mother. “What brings you here?” Dr Hern asked. “I have to have an abortion.” “Why?” “I’m not old enough to have a baby.” “But you told the counsellor we should all be killed?” “Yes, you should all be killed.” “Why?” “Because you do abortions.” “Me too?” “Yes, you should be killed, too.” “Do you want me killed before or after I do your abortion?” “Before.”
Now that Dr. Tiller has been murdered, there is only one doctor in the United States that performs the same procedures in a professional, reliable manner.
“It is my view that we are dealing with a fascist movement. It’s a terrorist, violent terrorist movement, and they have a fascist ideology…” Dr Hern goes on like that for some time. Long before the first doctor got shot back in 1993, he was warning that it would happen. He was getting hate mail and death threats way back in 1970, just for working in family planning. They started up again in 1973, two weeks after he helped start the first non-profit abortion clinic in Boulder. “I started sleeping with a rifle by my bed. I expected to get shot.” In 1985, someone threw a brick through his window during a protest by the quote unquote Pro-Life Action League. He put up a sign that said THIS WINDOW WAS BROKEN BY THOSE WHO HATE FREEDOM. In 1988, somebody fired five bullets through his window. In 1995, the American Coalition of quote unquote Life Activists put out a hit list with his (and Tiller’s) name on it. The feds gave them protection for about six months, then left them on their own.
“People don’t get it,” he says. “After eight murders, 17 attempted murders, 406 death threats, 179 assaults, and four kidnappings, people are still in denial. They say, ‘Well, this was just some wingnut guy who just decided to go blow up somebody.’ Wrong. This was a cold-blooded, brutal, political assassination that is the logical consequence of 35 years of hate speech and incitement to violence by people from the highest levels of American society, including but in no way limited to George Bush, Ronald Reagan, Jesse Helms, Bill O’Reilly, Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson. Reagan may not have been a fascist, but he was a tool of the fascists. Bush was most certainly a tool of the fascists. They use this issue to get power. They seem civilised, but underneath you have this seething mass of rabid anger and hatred of freedom that is really frightening, and they support people like the guy who shot George – they’re all pretending to be upset, issuing statements about how much they deplore violence, but it’s just bullshit. This is exactly what they wanted to happen.”
As if on cue for this tragic anniversary, Nebraska has passed a recent set of draconian laws restricting their state’s residents from obtaining abortions after 20 weeks of pregnancy, arguing that the fetus responds to pain at this point. However, this is a hypocritical stance because America is a country where we routinely slaughter animals who feel a great deal more pain and possess higher cognitive functions than fetuses under abortion. The woman is merely an afterthought of this legislation, and lawmakers callously push aside her pain and suffering in deference to the cluster of cells in her abdomen. A woman taxpayer is again reduced to the role of “baby-machine” in this society. No matter her own opinion, when viewed as a “baby-machine”, all other personal agency is ripped away despite America being “the freest place on earth”.
Another story that’s been circulating since the recent tragic Moscow subway bombings has been of female suicide bombers and their possible motivations. Women have been suicide bombers since the documented creation of the tactic. Women from all cultural backgrounds have perished as suicide bombers. Considering the diversity of the subject, wouldn’t it be difficult to pin down enough common motivations to write a short Salon article about it?
Don’t worry, our friends at Salon have written a very embarrassing article all about female suicide bombers, calling them victims, abused, depressive, mentally ill, etc… everything but politically motivated. The truth is that studies show suicide bombers don’t fit the profile described in Salon at all.
Existing research reveals a marked absence of major psychopathology among “would-be” suicide attackers; that the motivation and dynamics for choosing to engage in a suicide attack differ from those in the clinical phenomenon of suicide; and that there is a rational “strategic logic” to the use of suicide attack campaigns in asymmetric conflict. Silke (2003/91) argues that “as with other terrorists, there is no indication that suicide bombers suffer from psychological disorders or are mentally unbalanced in other ways. In contrast, their personalities are usually quite stable and unremarkable (at least within their own cultural context)” (p. 94). Israeli psychology professor Ariel Merari is one of the few people in the world to have collected systematic, empirical data on a significant sample of suicide bombers. He examined the backgrounds of every modern era (since 1983) suicide bomber in the Middle East. Although he expected to find suicidal dynamics and mental pathology, instead he found that “In the majority, you find none of the risk factors normally associated with suicide, such as mood disorders or schizophrenia, substance abuse or history of attempted suicide (92).”
Berko’s study, which is previewed in today’s Haaretz, paints a disturbing tableau of the inner world of female suicide bombers, the vast majority of whom “were exploited by the terrorist organizations, by close friends or even by their own families, and were pushed into carrying out terrorist attacks.” It appears that women’s motives for such attacks are rooted less in ideology than in histories of physical, mental, and sexual abuse within their own families. Their motives rarely involve free will, but rather blackmail or the hope of redemption for sexual indiscretions through violence and self-sacrifice.
…..
In Berko’s view, female suicide bombings have as much to do with a sort of proactive “honor killing” as they do with classic (and stereotypical) “Islam vs. the West” terrorism.
Back to the honor killings, back to putting women in a box and taking away their agency. Back to portraying them as reactionary members (victims) of society. At the heart of “honor killings” is the heart of all other domestic violence we in the West are often too familiar with. We do not consider domestic violence survivors to be reactionary members of society, do we?
Of course, the truth is that these women possess much more agency than the imperial apologist can bear to consider. Part of our continued violent presence in that area of the world requires us to “dehumanize the enemy”. Turning female suicide bombers into reactionary actors by “humanizing their suffering” (never at the hands of foreign aggressors!) is dishonest. The Salon articles and others like it never delve into the political motivations of the women. We must assume they have none. Therefore, the most tragic and disastrous act of their political resistance becomes de-politicized.
In 2004, Tariq Ramadan was denied a US visa because he was accused of funneling money to Hamas, which the United States considers a terrorist organization.
Of course, what actually happened was that Mr. Ramadan gave money to an organization that may have dispersed money to Hamas before Hamas was considered a terrorist organization in 2003. Likewise, Mr. Ramadan was not visiting America to raise money and sneak it to terrorists. He was offered a professorship at the University of Notre Dame (he now teaches at Oxford).
As one of the leading scholars on Islam and its relationship in the West, Mr. Ramadan is not welcome in a whole host of countries, including Saudi Arabia and his ancestral Egypt. His family has a history of rabble-rousing; Hassan al-Banna is his grandfather. Yet Mr. Ramadan was not born into a Muslim Brotherhood sleeper cell, he was raised and educated in Switzerland. Despite his academic and cultural achievements, he was still considered unfit for American consumption until this past week, when he was finally allowed entry.
We can assume that an esteemed Muslim scholar who argues for non-violence and integration with the West would be a valuable asset to our global academic community. So why was he blacklisted?
So if, for example, me, I’m banned from this country, I’ve been banned from this country because I speak my mind, I get the message: in fact, I’m not one of you. You are putting me outside, saying, “No, you’re banned from us.” So this is exactly what is happening with people like this. We push, we push, we push. We kill in Iraq. We kill in Afghanistan. And when we need a critical discussion here, by saying, “No, we don’t agree,” it should be open, and we should not be suspected. It’s not working. So you get everything except this sense of belonging.
And if you don’t get this sense of belonging, which is the psychological integration to your society, meaning if I want to change the policies in Iraq, I should be a citizen in this country to vote and to be critical and to reach out—this is where I belong, this is my country—if I don’t get this sense, I’m going to end up like this, exactly like, in the same way, Mohammad Sidique Khan. After—just before the bombing in London, he was saying, “You are killing our brothers there. We are going to kill you.” You and us, our brother and you. But he was born and raised in Britain. Exactly like him, he was here.
So it’s very—it’s a deep question here. It’s a deep dimension, that we have to understand that critical discussion is important. To feel at home here is important. And then, with this kind of understanding, I will challenge this understanding of Islam, of course, by saying, you know, we cannot be loyal to the United States of America and this very black-and-white attitude, dogmatic mind. I can understand that it is coming out of frustrations, but I disagree.
But I would like the politicians in the States and in the West to understand, if you carry on this atmosphere, this nurturing this perception that Islam is a threat, that the Muslims are a problem, not a potential contribution, you will end up having this kind of, you know, gap between us and them. And you ask yourself sometime, is it not what some populists want?
During the World Wars, all major players shared the same kinds of basic weaponry. It wasn’t until the creation of the atomic bomb that the scales tipped greatly in favor of one power over another with regards to military technology. As a result, the world’s great powers have been at a quiet military standstill since 1945. Any aggression from a great power against another great power could result in nuclear war. This has kept any major conflict from occurring since.
However, the great powers still fight in smaller deadly wars against non-nuclear powers. I say smaller because their geographical area is lessened. However, the amount of ordinance used in these conflicts greatly outnumbers the amounts of ordinance used during these great World Wars. Despite the fact that the victims of this overwhelming aggression are in no way equal in strength to the great powers, nor do they have access to weapons beyond rifles and RPGs, the great powers have never won a war in this way. Disproportionate distance warfare in this modern age results more often in a crippling and embarrassing loss for the great power than it does for the weaker, less equipped nation. It’s less effective at eradicating targets and threats and far more costly in the long run.
A video has been released recently that shows US forces in Iraq killing 15 innocent people. They joke over the radio with each other as they shoot at the people on the ground from over a mile away in their helicopters. This video was released through a site called “Wikileaks”, and it wasn’t until outrage grew online that major news networks decided to pick up the story. Even then, the video was censored “out of respect” for the families of those killed. What a joke! The video would have remained censored if the Army had its way, just like the photos of Abu Ghraib would have remained censored. Even caskets of dead soldiers are censored in the media, why would snuff videos be allowed? Released in this way, this long after the incident took place and was “cleared” by the Army, will fuel anger in Iraq and all over the world, not only because of the content, but because of the continued denial of the US government and population that their occupation creates such crimes against humanity.
The world powers learned a lesson after Vietnam. Instead of being able to practice their trade legitimately, journalists are now embedded with US soldiers. During the aftermath of the massacre in Baghdad, a Washington Post journalist was on the scene. The first time the paper mentions the possible misconduct by US soldiers, however, was after the Wikileaks release of the video, whereby they mentioned it in passing to promote the journalist’s book about Iraq.
This incident and its response indicates to me that the United States has become too far removed from its own warfare. Pilots in Nevada finish flying drones in Iraq and then drive home to kiss their wives and children. Helicopter gunmen fire thousands of rounds on unarmed civilians from over a mile away. Ask any man on the street in the US and chances are good that he will have forgotten that hundreds of thousands of US soldiers are occupying Iraq. However, ask any man in Iraq and he will remember this fact very clearly unless he is severely mentally ill or incapacitated. It is a reality he lives with every day. An American will see this footage, and they will begin to make excuses for the soldiers firing rounds from over a mile away, themselves as far removed from the violence as the soldier has become through his distance weapons. Most of the rest of the world’s population will see this video and, due to their daily proximity to violence and poverty, will become incensed. Both sides are fighting each other, but only one side lives with reality.
Perhaps the powers that be found it easier to make their populations ignore the war than convince the populations to support it. Since the Iraq war began in 2003, US citizens have responded tepidly at best both in support or in opposition to the war. There are few American citizens who would be willing to make great sacrifices for their cause. Removed from the violence, miles away in our helicopters, Americans have lost the capacity to understand their bloody actions against the rest of the world. Al-Jazeera runs photos of the bodies and shows uncensored video footage. Wolf Blitzer simply tells you about it before breaking news about Tiger Woods.
Like Willard complaining in “Apocolypse Now”, we are becoming soft in our hotel rooms while “Charlie” crouches in the jungle and gets harder. Our technology has evolved, but our resolve has become weaker. When soldiers become so far removed from the conflict that they lose the humanity of themselves in regard to their targets, they lose the war. It happened in Vietnam, and it will happen in Iraq and Afghanistan. By putting distance between us and our targets, we also lose the moral high ground. In an effort to “save American lives” – while lining the pockets of military contractors who create such technologies – we have made the Other more expendable. After all, our technology has grown to make some soldiers safer, but it has become more deadly and careless towards the target. Like the adoption of carpet bombing Europe in World War 2, the result is mass, needless civilian causalities. The only difference was that the various European countries had the means to adequately defend themselves. The Global South has resorted to suicide bombing.
While US soldiers grow fat on video games and Halliburton all-you-can-eat buffets, “Haji” crouches in the desert and gets harder. Only this is no longer a tactical issue, as it is to some old-guard grunts and generals. This has become a moral issue because our continued callousness results in the death and suffering of millions worldwide without a single pinch of moral consequence, which creates the cyclical environment wherein more lives will be ruined by our ignorance. However, instead of erradicating threats, distance warfare will multiply them, as more hearts and minds are repelled internationally by our standards.
What victims of prescription drug addiction look like 
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