“War is the very crudest of responses and reflects the utter failure of imagination and intelligence in foreign policy. The cycle of poverty, inequality, and hatred will grow worse. Terrorist recruiting will flourish in the aftermath.”
–Prof. Thompson Bradley, Swarthmore College
I’ve rarely disagreed with Max Sawicky in the year or so I’ve been reading his blog or enough to merit a mention, until now.
Max condemns this cartoon frame-by-frame calling creator Ted Rall a “crank” for writing that oil interests were behind the invasion of Afghanistan. He’s also thoroughly offended by what he considers to be a disparagement of Tillman’s intellect delivered to his relatives in a “sadistic” way. Maybe not. I’d prefer truth if a lie took my loved one in the hopes others wouldn’t make the same mistake. But when Max wrote, “This kind of crap helps Bush, among other reasons because it makes jingoists feel better than they are,” he implied that anyone who doesn’t join in the trashing of Rall is guilty of terminal ignorance so I feel compelled to share why I won’t be deleting Rall from my ‘Notable Opinion’ links.
I didn’t consider the strip brilliant but I can’t agree with Max’s complete rejection of it. About the first frame Max wrote “implying enlistees or the Army don’t read the paper is still a dumb stereotype and uncomplimentary to boot.” So what was Pat Tillman reading in the newspapers at the time?
For several months prior to May 23, 2002 when it was reported that Tillman had enlisted in the Army for three years, serious concerns had been appearing even in mainstream papers about repeated mishaps and questionable judgements. Flashy reports of “successes” were being debunked as shocking failures. Reckless hit-and-miss operations were taking a toll on civilians who were reduced to collateral damage far less important than test-driving new technologies. Priorities of the gov’t and media pivoted on creating the false impression that security in Afghanistan was under control and anyone who disagreed was ravaged as traitorous. The antiwar movement grew exponentially. The deplorable, inhumane way in which alleged Taliban members were being treated while incarcerated, amongst other stories, set-off alarm bells for anyone reading newspapers that our mission had gone terribly wrong in Afghanistan and generated vociferous doubts it’d ever gone right.
On Monday, February 11, 2002, Washington Post reporter Molly Moore informed readers that 27 mistakenly identified prisoners had been so harshly treated while in U.S. custody “that two men lost consciousness during the beatings while others suffered fractured ribs, loosened teeth and swollen noses.” This was the work of Special Forces and a harbinger of the wretched, criminal actions yet to come.
NFL.com wire reported that Pat Tillman wanted to join “the elite Rangers program with his younger brother, Kevin.” The conclusion I draw is he was motivated by family ethos, a competitive spirit, or was a faithfull viewer of FOX News, not an avid researcher or print media enthusiast. Had he been, to be considered a hero by my definition, he’d have done everything in his power to dissuade his brother from signing on not joined him in the debauchery.
2002 heralded January’s infamous SOTU, a primer in jingoism to come, in which George outlined his vision of permanent war and defined the “axis of evil.” The propagandists were in full strike mode and newspapers were soon brimming with pros and cons of invading Iraq. The framework tying Saddam to 9/11 was revealed and expounded upon (pdf). I have no problem with Rall’s second frame. It’s an accurate assessment of enlistees at that time. Troops from the 5th Special Forces Group who specialise in the Middle East had already been reassigned to Iraq duties as USA Today recently revealed. Max wrote, “Al Queda may have been in Pakistan and S.A., but it was also in Afghanistan,” yet at the point Tillman signed on our attention had already shifted elsewhere and towards a goal that was not in the best interest of Americans. How concerned were we with hunting Al Qaeda in Afghanistan?
“Everybody wants to know where Osama bin Laden is. The next question is, who cares?” says one Defense Department official, reflecting an attitude widespread in Pentagon corridors.
“Osama bin Laden as a center of gravity is gone,” he says.
A commenter in Max’s thread wrote about the third frame, “A ‘low rent’ occupation refers to RUMSFELDS THEORY OF WAR AND OCCUPATION ON THE CHEAP. Not the army in general.” Max countered this with, “I think it is a huge stretch to interpret “low-rent” as some kind of policy critique. In ordinary parlance, low-rent means low-class. Rall’s bourgeois bias is showing.” I think it’s a stretch to presume Rall is bourgeois by this ambiguous choice of descriptives. What should be used instead to describe people who are so desperate for money they would risk orphaning their young children and losing their souls killing in the name of an elitist cause? Is murder and oppression really an acceptable alternative to paying back a school loan? If Max intended to pay homage to those who join on the strength of their convictions, why? What are they fighting for?
Pipelines. Pass the tin hat and colour me a conspiracist. Send cards and letters to the troops in Georgia, Bosnia and the rest of our “empire of bases” across the globe. Condolences to the residents of the former Soviet state of Georgia for the mess we’re making of your ecosystem keeping America safe from the evildoers there. And belated notice of the additional regime change Georgians are experiencing in the neighbourhood without dropping one cluster bomb or creating thousands of terrified refugees and collateral casualties thanks to a different approach towards achieving the same goal. Tis a shame about those bridges, though.
No, it wasn’t perfect and I didn’t laugh at Rall’s comic. But clearly he intended to generate a lot of debate during times we should be doing much more of it and in that he succeeded. Until I find answers to questions such as why was Brown & Root Services awarded a contract to build a 408-unit detention camp at the Radio Range area of U.S. Naval Station, Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, in June 29, 2000 and these prisoners are not protected by the Geneva Convention, I’ll consider myself vigilant, not ignorant.
Diane, that’s an intersting link about the contract being awarded for G’t’mo in 2000 (the whole entry is interesting btw, this particularly caught my eye). Was the US housing any prisoners on the island prior to these contracts being offered?
I believe the Naval Base had been used during the late 90’s to temporarily shelter Cuban refugees when the U.S. and Fidel were having one of their pissing contests but I’ve never come across any mention of housing prisoners there.