{"id":872,"date":"2005-05-02T08:57:15","date_gmt":"2005-05-02T12:57:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/wordpress\/?p=872"},"modified":"2010-01-05T13:32:54","modified_gmt":"2010-01-05T19:32:54","slug":"save-your-souls","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/?p=872","title":{"rendered":"save your souls"},"content":{"rendered":"

Danny Schechter<\/a> cites this report by Peter Maass<\/a> and for an opinion on the U.S. decision to resurrect death squads he turns to Peter Davis, director of Hearts and Minds<\/em>, the 1975 Oscar-winning documentary about the Vietnam War recently restored by the Film Archive of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences<\/a>. My reaction to Hearts and Minds<\/em> is here<\/a>. The Amazon reviews<\/a> are much more interesting than the bit I wrote.<\/p>\n

The Way of the Commandos<\/a>
\nBy PETER MAASS <\/p>\n

There are far more Americans in Iraq today — some 140,000 troops in all — than there were in El Salvador, but U.S. soldiers and officers are increasingly moving to a Salvador-style advisory role. In the process, they are backing up local forces that, like the military in El Salvador, do not shy away from violence. It is no coincidence that this new strategy is most visible in a paramilitary unit that has Steele as its main adviser; having been a key participant in the Salvador conflict, Steele knows how to organize a counterinsurgency campaign that is led by local forces. He is not the only American in Iraq with such experience: the senior U.S. adviser in the Ministry of Interior, which has operational control over the commandos, is Steve Casteel, a former top official in the Drug Enforcement Administration who spent much of his professional life immersed in the drug wars of Latin America. Casteel worked alongside local forces in Peru, Bolivia and Colombia, where he was involved in the hunt for Pablo Escobar, the head of the Medellin cocaine cartel.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Schechter also cites an article by Mike Whitney<\/a> addressing antiwar Americans (who believe we should stay in Iraq)<\/p>\n

Are American’s prepared to offer their support to the same brutal apparatus of state-terror that was employed by Saddam? (Rumsfeld’s unannounced visit to Baghdad last week was to make sure that the newly elected officials didn’t tamper with his counterinsurgency operatives, most of who were formerly employed in Saddam’s secret police)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Why not address it to all Americans who defend the occupation, the same liberators<\/em> thrilled to joyfull tears by shock and awe who have not once offered their sincerest apologies for murdering so many people for no good goddamned reason, who are now forcing them to live in absolute, protracted misery, under an occupying force they want gone, on the premise they should like<\/em> us and invite us to stay? John Negroponte, another monster spreading his tentacles<\/a> in Iraq, said<\/a> about Iraqis, that “the citizens of this country have a high pain threshold.” In Hearts and Minds<\/em>, Westmoreland said, “The Oriental doesn’t put the same high price on life as does the Westerner(ed<\/a>)…life is not important.” <\/p>\n

Who doesn’t feel pain when their loved ones are slaughtered? <\/p>\n

when a dog crawled towards us out of some ruin<\/strong>
\n a poem by Mikey Fatboy Delgado<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

when a dog crawled towards us out of some ruin, out of some other destruction (and god knows how far it had crawled, as slowly as that, dragging itself by its useless legs) it was the first thing that had needed us outside of our human selves for so long, and we were infused with love at its coming close, the two of us, while the bombers came in waves and waves with their pain, and the fear of pain, and everywhere death and the terror of death – and for a minute of that dog’s journey the radio suddenly worked and mentioned that the London papers were telling the English that the war was progressing well, and the dog crawled towards our outstretched hands, towards our shelter, with an ambition to be held and whispered to, and its eyes, of course, were brown, and tender, like the eyes of a dog that wants to be taken into human arms, and behind us in the shelter a woman was screaming again and again and again that God has no mercy, God has no mercy, God has no mercy<\/em>, and her shrieks were shrill enough to be clear and level with explosions of houses, collapsing buildings, weeping, and in the shelter people held their small children as bombs rained and the London papers said the war was progressing well, and people held their children tight to them, not looking into their children’s eyes for horror of what was there, and the dog crawled closer and more people in the shelter wished, as the bombs dropped, as more women howled, as old men died, as children wept, more people in the shelter wished the dog to be among us, for something we could touch, something we might comfort, and nearby a building in which we knew were many people, workers, artists, a family, an English-language school, a small praying station, was obliterated from the air as bombs found it hiding among us, and when everyone turned back from that to see who of us in the shelter was newly dead, the dog was seen to be ripped from throat to hip, and we seemed to look at it in a way we couldn’t look into our children’s eyes, and the dog was breathing and would die soon, and when it died its eyes didn’t close, and nothing else ever tried to be with us in our shelter again, and all we had was each other, and it wasn’t enough.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Danny Schechter cites this report by Peter Maass and for an opinion on the U.S. decision to resurrect death squads he turns to Peter Davis, director of Hearts and Minds, the 1975 Oscar-winning documentary about the Vietnam War recently restored … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-872","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pdXTf-e4","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/872","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=872"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/872\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12473,"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/872\/revisions\/12473"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=872"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=872"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=872"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}