Nogmaals de NRC-opiniemaakster Caroline de Gruyter die in haar krant van vrijdag 30 oktober 2020 schreef:
President Theodore Roosevelt zei een eeuw geleden: ‘Ons voornaamste nut voor de mensheid berust op het combineren van kracht met high purpose.’ Na de val van de Muur in 1989 werd dit hogere doel aangepast. Het Westen had gezegevierd. Nu wilden de Amerikanen het uitbreiden: de rest van de wereld zou ook westerse waarden overnemen en democratisch worden. Europa dreef uit de Amerikaanse focus. Dat speet veel Europeanen niet. Ze deelden die universele missiedrang niet en verafschuwden de methodes die de Amerikanen in Irak of Afghanistan gebruikten.
Deze mondiale ‘beschavingsmissie’ liep stuk op China, Rusland, islamitische staat en oorlogen als in Syrië.
https://www.nrc.nl/nieuws/2020/10/30/laatste-kans-voor-het-westen-a4018093
Afgezien van haar niet nader toegelichte beweringen, is haar stelling dat ‘veel Europeanen,’ deze ‘universele missiedrang’ niet ‘deelden,’ en de onlosmakelijk daaraan verbonden oorlogsmisdaden en misdaden tegen de menselijkheid ‘verafschuwden,’ geeft zij toch de schuld voor het mislukken van deze zogenaamde ‘mondiale beschavingsmissie’ — met hoogte- c.q. dieptepunten als Abu Ghraib en Fallujah — aan ‘China, Rusland, islamitische staat.’ Zij betreurt het dat de ‘high purpose,’ die zij aan de Amerikaans agressie toedicht, is ‘stuk’ gelopen. Dat dit ‘hoge doel’ van de Amerikaanse en Britse ‘beschavingsmissie’ in Irak de greep op de oliebronnen was, zoals Alan Greenspan en John Bolton naderhand verklaarden, verzwijgt de uitgekookte mevrouw De Gruyter. Haar zienswijze wordt breed gedeeld door de gecorrumpeerde polderpers en de al even doortrapte polderpolitici. Daarentegen weten goed geïnformeerde buitenlandse deskundigen dat deze infantiele voorstelling van zaken niet meer is dan ordinaire propaganda voor een financieel- en moreel failliet neoliberaal- en neoconservatief systeem.
Nog een voorbeeld waaraan De Gruyter geen woord besteedt. De bekende Amerikaanse onderzoeksjournalist, en mede-oprichter van ‘the online news publication The Intercept,’ Jeremy Scahill, schreef op 30 juli 2021 over de Amerikaanse klokkenluider Daniel Hale dat hij een man is:
of tremendous conscience, courage, and moral clarity. It is an abomination that this brave whistleblower has been sentenced to nearly four years in prison after being convicted of exposing the horrors of the U.S. drone assassination programs, the killing of civilians, and the Kafkaesque ‘terror’ watchlisting system run by the government…
Among the ‘crimes’ that Hale was convicted of are the following: revealing that, at times, nearly nine out of 10 people killed in so-called targeted strikes by the U.S. are not the intended targets; exposing the complicity of top U.S. government officials in a secret kill chain that decides who should be assassinated by drone strike; exposing that the U.S. government officially labels unknown people it kills as ‘enemies killed in action’ unless they are posthumously proven to have been civilians; and exposing the secret watchlisting rulebook used to label people, including U.S. citizens, as ‘known or suspected terrorists’ without evidence that they did anything wrong.
Daniel Hale should be pardoned and released, and the government should pay him restitution for the trauma it has inflicted on him for daring to speak out, at great personal risk, for the victims of wars and extrajudicial assassinations funded by U.S. taxpayers. He deserves the gratitude of good people everywhere for his courage, bravery, and sacrifice. It is a grave injustice that a man who blew the whistle on the killing of civilians is in jail and that those who murder them receive medals or appear as pundits on cable news.
https://theintercept.com/2021/07/30/daniel-hale-drone-whistleblower/
Wikipedia meldt over hem dat:
In 2009, Daniel Hale enlisted in the U.S. Air Force. In 2013, he was assigned to the NSA and the Joint Special Operations Command at Bagram Airfield, the largest U.S. military base in Afghanistan, where he helped identify targets for assassination. In February 2014, after leaving the Air Force and becoming a contractor at the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, Hale leaked 17 classified documents to The Intercept. The documents contained details about U.S. kill lists and civilian casualties of drone strikes, and in some cases revealed actions that allegedly amount to war crimes.
In August 2014, the FBI raided his home in Lorton, Virginia, in what he described as retribution for his political activism. In 2016, he appeared in the documentary film National Bird, where he described his crisis of conscience and the FBI raid.
In 2019, Hale was charged with disclosing intelligence information and theft of government property. He was arraigned in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia. In March 2021, he pleaded guilty to retaining and transmitting national defense information. On July 27, 2021, citing the need to deter others from disclosing government secrets, U.S. District Judge Liam O'Grady sentenced Hale to 45 months in prison for violating the Espionage Act of 1917.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Hale_(intelligence_analyst)
Veelzeggend is het feit dat sommige Amerikaanse insiders wel degelijk hun geweten laten spreken, terwijl buitenstaanders als Caroline de Gruyter, Geert Mak, Hubert Smeets, Bas Heijne, Ian Buruma reageren alsof zij absoluut geen geweten bezitten. Opmerkelijk aangezien The New York Times op 22 juni 2021 berichtte dat:
Suicides among post-9/11 veterans are four times as high as combat deaths, a new study finds… A new report from the Costs of War Project at Brown University found an estimated 30,177 active duty military personnel and veterans who have served since the Sept 11, 2001, terrorist attacks have died by suicide.
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/22/us/911-suicide-rate-veterans.html
Wat is het verschil tussen een opiniemaker die functioneert als een oorlogsopruier en een militair die van Washington opdracht krijgt om aan het moorden te slaan? Waarom kan een militair wel de consequenties van zijn daden zien en een opiniemaakster als Caroline de Gruyter niet? Waarom gedraagt een militair zich wel als een mens van vlees en bloed en ontbreekt het een columniste als De Gruyter aan een greintje empathie? De reden waarom zij zo psychisch gestoord reageert, is, vrees ik, de noodzaak om haar opdrachtgevers en haar publiek te behagen. Aan de rechter die hem naderhand tot 45 maanden gevangenisstraf veroordeelde, omdat hij gedocumenteerd de Amerikaanse oorlogsmisdaden had aangetoond, schreef Daniel Hale de volgende brief:
Dear Judge O’Grady:
In my capacity as a signals intelligence analyst stationed at Bagram Airbase, I was made to track down the geographic location of handset cellphone devices believed to be in the possession of so-called enemy combatants. To accomplish this mission required access to a complex chain of globe-spanning satellites capable of maintaining an unbroken connection with remotely piloted aircraft, commonly referred to as drones… in spite of my better instincts, I continued to follow orders and obey my command for fear of repercussion. Yet, all the while, becoming increasingly aware that the war had very little to do with preventing terror from coming into the United States and a lot more to do with protecting the profits of weapons manufacturers and so-called defense contractors. The evidence of this fact was laid bare all around me. In the longest, most technologically advanced war in American history, contract mercenaries outnumbered uniform wearing soldiers 2-to-1 and earned as much as 10 times their salary. Meanwhile, it did not matter whether it was, as I had seen, an Afghan farmer blown in half, yet miraculously conscious and pointlessly trying to scoop his insides off the ground, or whether it was an American flag-draped coffin lowered into Arlington National Cemetery to the sound of a 21-gun salute. Bang, bang, bang. Both serve to justify the easy flow of capital at the cost of blood — theirs and ours. When I think about this, I am grief-stricken and ashamed of myself of the things that I’ve done to support it… at a farewell gathering for those of us who would soon be leaving military service, I sat alone, transfixed by the television, while others reminisced together. On television was breaking news of the president [Obama] giving his first public remarks about the policy surrounding the use of drone technology in warfare. His remarks were made to reassure the public of reports scrutinizing the death of civilians in drone strikes and the targeting of American citizens. The president said that a high standard of ‘near certainty’ needed to be met in order to ensure that no civilians were present.
But from what I knew of the instances where civilians plausibly could have been present, those killed were nearly always designated enemies killed in action unless proven otherwise. Nonetheless, I continued to heed his words as the president went on to explain how a drone could be used to eliminate someone who posed an ‘imminent threat’ to the United States.
Using the analogy of taking out a sniper, with his sights set out on an unassuming crowd of people, the president likened the use of drones to prevent a would-be terrorist from carrying out his evil plot. But as I understood it to be, the unassuming crowd had been those who lived in fear and terror of drones in their skies and the sniper in the scenario had been me. I came to believe that the policy of drone assassination was being used to mislead the public that it keep[s] us safe…
Then it came to be that one day after work I stuck around to socialize with a pair of co-workers whose talented work I had come to greatly admire. They made me feel welcomed, and I was happy to have earned their approval. But then, to my dismay, our brand new friendship took an unexpectedly dark turn. They elected that we should take a moment and view together some archived footage of past drone strikes. Such bonding ceremonies around a computer to watch so-called ‘war porn’ had not been new to me. I partook in them all the time while deployed to Afghanistan. But on that day, years after the fact, my new friends [gasped] and sneered, just as my old ones had, at the sight of faceless men in the final moments of their lives. I sat by watching too, said nothing, and felt my heart breaking into pieces.
Your Honor, the truest truism that I’ve come to understand about the nature of war is that war is trauma. I believe that any person either called upon or coerced to participate in war against their fellow man is promised to be exposed to some form of trauma. In that way, no soldier blessed to have returned home from war does so uninjured.
The crux of PTSD is that it is a moral conundrum that afflicts invisible wounds on the psyche of a person made to burden the weight of experience after surviving a traumatic event. How PTSD manifests depends on the circumstances of the event. So how is the drone operator to process this? The victorious rifleman, unquestioningly remorseful, at least keeps his honor intact by having faced off against his enemy on the battlefield. The determined fighter pilot has the luxury of not having to witness the gruesome aftermath. But what possibly could I have done to cope with the undeniable cruelties that I perpetuated?
My conscience, once held at bay, came roaring back to life. At first, I tried to ignore it. Wishing instead that someone, better placed than I, should come along to take this cup from me. But this, too, was folly. Left to decide whether to act, I only could do that which I ought to do before God and my own conscience. The answer came to me, that to stop the cycle of violence, I ought to sacrifice my own life and not that of another person.
So I contacted an investigative reporter with whom I had had an established prior relationship and told him that I had something the American people needed to know.
Respectfully,
Daniel Hale
Wanneer de NRC-opiniemaakster Caroline de Gruyter president Theodore Roosevelt citeert die ‘een eeuw geleden [zei]: ‘Ons voornaamste nut voor de mensheid berust op het combineren van kracht met high purpose,’ dan impliceert zij tevens dat het ‘hogere doel’ een continuïteit in de Amerikaanse geschiedenis was en nog steeds is. Ook dit is een leugen. In werkelijkheid was Roosevelt’s ‘high purpose’ vanaf het allereerste begin gebaseerd op de overtuiging dat voor de -- volgens hem -- ‘primitieve’ Indiaanse volkeren er geen plaats was in het ‘Amerika’ dat hem voor ogen stond, zoals ondermeer bleek uit zijn opmerking dat zelfs ‘braakliggende ruimtes’ niet:
gereserveerd moeten worden voor het gebruik van verspreid levende primitieve stammen, wier leven slechts een paar graden minder betekenisloos, smerig, en meedogenloos is dan dat van de wilde beesten met wie ze het gebied delen.
Die opvatting was wijd verspreid, en ik vrees dat dit nog steeds het geval is in kringen van de elite en hun media-woordvoerders. Typerend is dat dit racisme ook in het taalgebruik terugkeert. Dezelfde Amerikaanse militaire commandanten die eerst tegen de Indianen vochten, en naderhand tegen de Filipijnse vrijheidsstrijders, noemden het overzeese gebied 'Indian Country,' een begrip dat eveneens door Amerikaanse militairen in Vietnam en Irak werd gebruikt. In zijn boek Confronting Imperialism (2007) schreef de Amerikaanse geleerde Jim Zwick bovendien dat de:
Funston’s example has bred many imitators, and many ghastly additions to our history: the torturing of Filipinos by the awful ‘water-cure,’ for instance, to make them confess — what? Truth? Or lies? How can one know which it is they are telling? For under unendurable pain a man confesses anything that is required of him, true or false, and his evidence is worthless…
Desondanks werd een eeuw later deze vorm van foltering door de VS nog steeds toegepast. Wikipedia:
Waterboarding is a form of water torture in which water is poured over a cloth covering the face and breathing passages of an immobilized captive, causing the individual to experience the sensation of drowning. Waterboarding can cause extreme pain, dry drowning, damage to lungs, brain damage from oxygen deprivation, other physical injuries including broken bones due to struggling against restraints, lasting psychological damage, and death. Adverse physical consequences can manifest themselves months after the event, while psychological effects can last for years.
In the most common method of waterboarding, the captive's face is covered with cloth or some other thin material, and the subject is immobilized on their back at an incline of 10 to 20 degrees. Torturers pour water onto the face over the breathing passages, causing an almost immediate gag reflex and creating a drowning sensation for the captive… Victims of waterboarding are at extreme risk of sudden death…
The term water board torture appeared in press reports as early as 1976. In late 2007, it was widely reported that the United States Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) was waterboarding extrajudicial prisoners and that the Office of Legal Counsel, Department of Justice, had authorized the procedure among enhanced interrogation techniques…
In August 2002 and March 2003, in its war on terror, the George W. Bush administration, through Jay S. Bybee, the Office of Legal Counsel, Department of Justice, issued what became known as the Torture Memos after being leaked in 2004. These legal opinions (including the 2002 Bybee memo) argued for a narrow definition of torture under US law. The first three were addressed to the CIA, which took them as authority to use the described enhanced interrogation techniques (more generally classified as torture) on detainees classified as enemy combatants.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waterboarding
De meesten van hen — onder wie baby's en kinderen die nog niet zelfstandig konden lopen — werden in een greppel gegooid en vervolgens met M60 automatische vuurwapens vermoord… Het exacte aantal slachtoffers is nooit vastgesteld, maar het monument op de plek van het bloedbad draagt 504 namen.
https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bloedbad_van_Mỹ_Lai
two hours before dawn, the Puritans and their Indian allies marched on the Pequot village at Mystic, slaughtering all but a handful of its inhabitants. On June 5, Captain Mason attacked another Pequot village, this one near present-day Stonington, and again the Indian inhabitants were defeated and massacred. On July 28, a third attack and massacre occurred near present-day Fairfield, and the Pequot War came to an end. Most of the surviving Pequot were sold into slavery, though a handful escaped to join other southern New England tribes.
Uit het verslag van de slachtpartij wordt duidelijk dat:
The Captain also said, WE MUST BURN THEM; and immediately stepping into the Wigwam where he had been before, brought out a Fire-Brand, and putting it into the Matts with which they were covered, set the Wigwams on Fire. Lieutenant Thomas Bull and Nicholas Omsted beholding, came up; and when it was throughly kindled, the Indians ran as Men most dreadfully Amazed.
And indeed such a dreadful Terror did the ALMIGHTY let fall upon their Spirits, that they would fly from us and run into the very Flames, where many of them perished. And when the Fort was throughly Fired, Command was given, that all should fall off and surround the Fort; which was readily attended by all…
The Fire was kindled on the North East Side to windward; which did swiftly over run the Fort, to the extreme Amazement of the Enemy, and great Rejoycing of ourselves. Some of them climbing to the Top of the Palizado; others of them running into the very Flames; many of them gathering to windward, lay pelting at us with their Arrows; and we repayed them with our small Shot: Others of the Stoutest issued forth, as we did guess, to the Number of Forty, who perished by the Sword…
Thus were they now at their Wits End, who not many Hours before exalted themselves in their great Pride, threatening and resolving the utter Ruin and Destruction of all the English, Exulting and Rejoycing with Songs and Dances: But GOD was above them, who laughed his Enemies and the Enemies of his People to Scorn, making them as a fiery Oven: Thus were the Stout-Hearted spoiled, having slept their last Sleep, and none of their Men could find their Hands: Thus did the LORD judge among the Heathen, filling the Place with dead Bodies! […]
And thus in little more than one Hour's space was their impregnable Fort with themselves utterly Destroyed, to the Number of six or seven Hundred…
Thus did the LORD scatter his Enemies with his strong Arm! The Pequots now became a Prey to all Indians. Happy were they that could bring in their Heads to the English: Of which there came almost daily to Winsor, or Hartford. But the Pequots growing weary hereof, sent some of the Chief that survived to mediate with the English; offering that If they might but enjoy their Lives, they would become the English Vassals, to dispose of them as they pleased. Which was granted them. Whereupon ONKOS and MYANTONIMO were sent for; who with the Pequots met at Hartford. The Pequots being demanded, How many of them were then living? Answered, about One Hundred and Eighty, or Two Hundred…
The Pequots were then bound by COVENANT, That none should inhabit their native Country, nor should any of them be called PEQUOTS any more.
https://college.cengage.com/history/ayers_primary_sources/account_pequot_war.htm
To Theodore Roosevelt, the 'most ultimately righteous of all wars is a war with savages, though it is apt to be also the most terrible and inhuman,' but no matter, because it was 'idle to apply to savages the rules of international morality which obtain between stable and cultured communities.’ […] Not that Roosevelt went 'so far as to think that the only good Indians are dead Indians, but I believe nine out of ten are, and I shouldn't inquire too closely into the case of the tenth.’
Voor Roosevelt stond vast dat ‘No triumph of peace is quite so great as the supreme triumph of war.’ Toen ik Shalom in 2003 interviewde benadrukte hij de continuïteit van het Amerikaanse racisme dat volgens hem niet meteen zou verdwijnen zodra gekleurde politici het buitenlandse beleid mede bepalen, zoals naderhand ook bleek uit de beleidsdaden van minister van Buitenlandse Zaken Condoleezza Rice, haar voorganger Colin Powell, en niet te vergeten president Barack Obama. In zijn boek Imperial Alibis: Rationalizing U.S. Intervention After the Cold War (1993) verwoordde professor Shalom dit als volgt:
Racism against Africans was another fundamental building block of American ideology. Deemed to be sub-human, they were subjected to a barbaric and brutal system of slavery. Lincoln was willing to accept slavery so long as the union could be preserved; and when the Civil War drove him to abolish slavery he did not change his belief in black inferiority. When the South introduced Jim Crow laws to maintain the descendants of slaves as second-class citizens, the northern elite went along. Even after World War II, President Harry Truman was referring to blacks as 'niggers.' Derogatory references to blacks were standard fare for President Nixon and the senior officials of his administration. 'I wonder what your dining room is going to smell like,' Kissinger chortled (schaterlachend. svh) to Senator Fulbright, regarding a dinner for African diplomats.
With racist views deeply embedded in the minds of U. S. policy-makers and rooted in domestic structures of domination and subordination, it is not surprising that these views have influenced the way in which Washington looked at and acted in the world outside.
The presence of a few non-whites in policymaking circles is not likely to change the nature of U.S. foreign policy very much; to attain positions of power, these individuals would have to have shown substantial conformity to the prevailing values of the elite. A substantial racial diversity among policy-makers, on the other hand, would likely make racism a less significant factor in the way Washington deals with the world. But such an occurrence is by no means imminent, and will not come to pass as long as racial inequality remains a fundamental characteristic of the U.S. domestic landscape. Until this time, racism will continue to be an important factor in U.S. foreign policy.
De Amerikaanse historicus Daniel J. Castellano schreef op zijn beurt in het essay Rooseveltian Imperialism (2012):
The imperialist ideology of Theodore Roosevelt was in no small part motivated by a belief in the superiority of the race and civilization of Anglo-Saxon peoples, as articulated in his Autobiography and other writings. Many of the tropes and prejudices articulated under this overtly racist theoretical framework have persisted today among American commentators when discussing 'developing nations' as squabbling, 'immature democracies,' full of un-industrious, corrupt, or cowardly leaders. Perhaps a recognition of the racist origins of these attitudes will give us pause in applying them instinctively in a neocolonialist context. Racism and nationalism are not as far apart as we would like to believe…
In the late nineteenth century, there was no consensus that the four ‘subspecies’ of man were even of common origin, much less that they were of equal worth. The ascendant belief in the biological superiority of the Caucasian race, and of the Germanic peoples in particular, seemed to be vindicated by the rise of global colonial empires headed by European nations. Exposure to other cultures did not persuade the conquerors of their equality, but of the backwardness of other nations and their need for tutelage. This attitude of benign condescension was most famously expressed in Rudyard Kipling’s ‘White Man’s Burden,’ which may be taken as our point of departure for understanding Roosevelt.
Over zijn ‘Desire for an American Empire’ is bekend dat:
Like most Americans, Roosevelt believed that his nation was greatest of all, and he concluded from that belief that the United States most eminently ought to have an empire, since it stood for the highest ideals and was most capable of their practical implementation. Like European imperialists, he rationalized empire as a humanitarian endeavor by which the enlightened peoples educated the backward and preserved them from plague, famine, war, oppression and superstition.
In his private correspondence, Roosevelt confessed to having a 'taste for ethnic contests,' and he believed these were necessary so that the civilized nations should establish themselves over the barbaric nations. The great powers of the world had a twofold responsibility to suppress 'savagery and barbarism' and 'to help those who are struggling toward civilization.' In Roosevelt's view, the expansion of the 'civilized' races was essential to world peace; otherwise 'warlike barbarians' such as the Turks and Sudanese Mahdists would gain ground, causing 'endless war.’
The decrease in foreign wars at the turn of the century was 'due solely to the power of the mighty civilized races which have not lost the fighting instinct, and which by their expansion are gradually bringing peace to the red wastes where the barbarian peoples of the world hold sway.' Modern imperialism, like that of ancient Rome, is identified with the promotion of peace throughout the world.
Ethnic contests, whether they took the form of military conquest or economic penetration, not only protected backward peoples from self-destructive warfare, but also served to 'prevent the higher races from losing their nobler traits and from being overwhelmed by the lower races.' Roosevelt clearly saw the less civilized peoples as a threat to European and North American culture. By asserting and promoting Western culture aggressively, the West protected its own future against barbarian conquest. Active participation in ethnic contests forced Westerners to exercise their 'nobler traits,' which could be lost if they were conquered or assimilated by intermarriage.
The latter concern is explicitly addressed by Roosevelt in his discussion of Latin Americans. Roosevelt did not consider the ‘Latin race’ to be among the ‘Dominant Peoples,’ and he faulted the Spaniard for ‘the ease with which he drops to a lower ethnic level,’ evidently referring to his tendency to breed with the ‘tropic aboriginal races.’ Roosevelt’s racist condescension toward Latin Americans is especially directed toward those of the tropics, following a centuries-old intellectual tradition regarding tropical people as congenitally dull and shiftless. His esteem for a people seems to rise as he moves away from the equator, and he even praises the republics of ‘the Argentine, Brazil and Chile.’
http://www.arcaneknowledge.org/histpoli/roosevelt.htm
Aan de hand van dit racistisch mens- en wereldbeeld ontwikkelde Teddy Roosevelt zijn neo-koloniaal beleid. Toch bleef hij een eeuw later voor opiniemaker Geert Mak nog steeds de president bij uitstek die streefde naar ‘orde, evenwicht,’ waaraan hij toevoegde ‘ook in de rest van de wereld,' zonder dat mijn oude vriend erbij vermeldde dat deze ‘orde’ voor ‘the Person Sitting in Darkness,’ zoals Twain hem/haar noemde, in de praktijk de wanorde betekende van de uiterst gewelddadige kapitalistische repressie en uitbuiting. Zo was het altijd geweest sinds Columbus zijn eerste voetstappen in de ‘Nieuwe Wereld’ zette. De Amerikaanse hoogleraar American Studies, David E. Stannard, noteert hierover in zijn studie American Holocaust. The conquest of the new world (1993):
Volgende keer meer over Caroline de Gruyter’s en Geert Mak’s opvattingen over de — in de woorden van Roosevelt — ‘kracht van de machtige, geciviliseerde rassen die het instinct om te vechten niet hebben verloren, en die door hun expansie geleidelijk aan vrede brengen in de rode woestenij waar de barbaarse volkeren in de wereld de scepter zwaaien.’
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