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<div class="entry-date">Weekend Edition Jan 31-Feb 02, 2014<br>
<b><small><small><a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://www.counterpunch.org/2014/01/31/the-innocence-of-american-imperialism/">http://www.counterpunch.org/2014/01/31/the-innocence-of-american-imperialism/</a></small></small></b><br>
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<div class="subheadlinestyle"><b><big>Joystick Criminality</big></b></div>
<h1 class="article-title">The Innocence of American Imperialism</h1>
<div class="mainauthorstyle">by AHMAD BARQAWI</div>
<div class="main-text"><big> </big>
<p><big><big>Another day, another American atrocity in Iraq revealed.</big></big></p>
<big><big></big></big>
<p><big><big>By now, it’s become a very familiar (albeit unfortunate)
tale; gory pictures of American marines’ criminal shenanigans in
third-world countries surface, with little to zero indignation from the
mainstream media or the public, the Pentagon announces a full
investigation and/or a “thorough” inquiry into the matter (which, for
the uninitiated, are nothing more than shoddy euphemisms for letting
the perpetrators slide through unpunished and their crimes un-probed),
the story dies down quickly and the U.S. carries on preaching democracy
and human rights the world over at the point of a gun… or a drone
missile for that matter. Rinse, repeat.</big></big></p>
<big><big></big></big>
<p><big><big>After that horrendous milestone of a moral depravity that
was Abu Ghraib, we thought we’d seen all that there was to see from
America’s inglorious, democracy-spreading escapades in the region, but
as it turned out; the Abu Ghraib torture fiasco was just the tip of the
atrocities iceberg; a torrent of graphic images and videos has been
leaking ever since, practically giving us ringside seats to America’s
drive for total hegemony and laying bare the U.S. military for the
morally barren apparatus of occupation, death and torture that it
really is; from U.S. marines taking trophy pictures of their “kills” of
indigenous people to sexual humiliation and physical abuses of captives
and prisoners of war, we’ve even seen American soldiers, proudly
wearing their psychopathologies on their military sleeves, urinating on
the dead corpses of their slain victims. Now we have the burning of
Iraqi corpses in the backyards of their own homes till they were no
more than crumbled piles of ashes and charred skeletons, because
apparently slaughtering them was not enough. Shock and awe indeed.</big></big></p>
<big><big></big></big>
<p><big><big>Courtesy of leaked pictures obtained and published by
celebrity gossip and entertainment news website TMZ (evidently the
burning of Iraqis is just that- entertainment, and is relegated to
the-latest-Kardashian-spectacle type of tabloid news, only in the Land
of the Stars and Stripes); again we are “treated” to a sneak peek into
the horrible psyche of the American military during its literal
obliteration of the city of Fallujah in 2004.</big></big></p>
<big><big></big></big>
<p><big><big>The pictures show U.S. marines emptying gallons of
gasoline or benzene onto Iraqi corpses and setting them ablaze, giving
a new meaning to the “liberation of Iraq”, another picture shows an
American soldier kneeling down on the ground and pointing his machine
gun to the skull of an Iraqi insurgent with a “triumphant” smirk on his
face in what can only be seen as an apt metaphor for Bush’s “Mission
Accomplished” banner.</big></big></p>
<big><big></big></big>
<p><big><big>The stomach-turning photographs were reportedly taken in
2004 in Fallujah, where, it seems that, the fate of those Iraqis who
managed to escape the incineration of their city with scores of
depleted uranium and cluster bombs was good ol’ fashioned gasoline
bonfires.</big></big></p>
<big><big></big></big>
<p><big><big>Those pictures are merely the latest in a litany of
atrocious leaks, from Abu Ghraib to Guantanamo and Afghanistan, which
only goes to invalidate that whole “few-rotten-apples” theory that the
Pentagon usually invokes in these cases, making it virtually impossible
for us to keep track of just how many individual “rogue soldiers” and
“lone crackpots” there are in the U.S. Army.</big></big></p>
<big><big></big></big>
<p><big><big>Predictably; the pictures have barely been a blip on the
radar of the mainstream media, the blundering of Iraq is an old story
now, everyone moved on and its lessons went unheeded; all swept under
the pristine rug of “America’s Exceptionalism”, where the value of a
human life remains terribly skewed and outweighed by the barrel of oil,
imagine the (capitalist) outrage if those were Iraqi oil fields burning
and not actual human beings with flesh and bone… and (presumably) human
rights.</big></big></p>
<big><big></big></big>
<p><big><big>Even the Arab World seems marooned in its own moral
bankruptcy nowadays. When the burning of Qurans generates more outrage
and anger than images of burning Iraqis, you know we’re in trouble.
Perhaps we’ve come to grow thicker skin; the avalanche of images of
beheadings, feasting on human organs and pallid children starving to
death that we’re being bombarded with from Syria (America’s new
“democratization” sandbox) tends to do that, but I can’t help but
wonder; will we awake from our deep moral slumber if some American
lunatic preacher began another round of Quran burning or if (god
forbid!), some hack director made another lousy anti-Islam internet
movie?</big></big></p>
<big><big></big></big>
<p><big><big>Speaking of “The Innocence of Islam”, I think it’s high
time a movie was made about the innocence of America’s Imperialism;
chronicling one brutal occupation after another, a desolate collage of
an imperial power hard at work, reigning terror and destruction all
over Afghanistan, Iraq, Yemen, Libya and beyond, all of which offer
huge (and bleak) reservoirs of source material. I imagine it would go
something like this:</big></big></p>
<big><big></big></big>
<p><big><big>Fade into the opening scene; we are shown graphic images
of scattered limbs on street corners, women in black veils shrieking
their voices hoarse and barefoot children in ragged pajamas; faces and
hair covered in dirt and clouds of uranium dust as they scour the
rubble of what once was their home for anything that might bring a bit
of warmth to their trembling bodies or respite to their man-made
ordeal, the title card reads: Iraq 2003.</big></big></p>
<big><big></big></big>
<p><big><big>We cut to another scene; a couple of jubilant U.S.
military officers posing next to a sweaty pile of naked prisoners,
smiling contently as they marvel at their own “human-architectural”
handiwork; a pyramid of dark skinned naked Iraqis -some of whom are old
enough to be the soldiers’ parents-, keeping up with the all-American
tradition of constructing beer-can pyramids and shrines of empty rum
bottles; only this time it’s a shrine of shame and eroding human
dignity, other prisoners are lined up against the wall, again
butt-naked, faces covered in black hoods and forced to masturbate in
unison for the sick, twisted viewing pleasure of their “civilized”
western captors when they’re not busy urinating on other wounded
detainees and electrocuting their private parts, of course Iraqi women
prisoners are “fair game” for American army officers for whom rape and
sodomization is the “standard operating procedure”, and underage Iraqi
detainees receive “hands-on” crash courses in America’s sexually-driven
“harsh interrogation techniques”. The title card reads: America’s Abu
Ghraib torture prison and detention facility.</big></big></p>
<big><big></big></big>
<p><big><big>The rotten film rolls on to yet another scene; an Iraqi
woman is giving birth in a hospital room, the baby is deformed;
malformed facial features, especially his mouth and nose; yet another
“depleted uranium child”, Iraqi mothers are destined to reap the bitter
fruits of America’s brand of democracy and freedom for generations to
come; in stillbirths, abnormal tumors, birth defects, newborn babies
with extra limbs, enlarged heads or babies with one eye at the center
of the face, like lifelong hideous reminders that the American military
was here, that the American empire stampeded its way through here. The
title card reads: Fallujah, Iraq.</big></big></p>
<big><big></big></big>
<p><big><big>Cut to the next scene; the setting this time is a wedding
ceremony somewhere in Afghanistan which wouldn’t be complete without
the “blessings” of the American military in the form of fighter jets,
dropping their loads of bombs on the wedding party. In another scene;
an American helicopter pilot is singing “Bye Bye Ms. American Pie”
before blasting an Afghan farmer with a hellfire missile to which his
comrade says “Nice!!!”. Joystick criminality at its most grotesque. The
title card reads: America’s campaign of democracy and human rights in
Afghanistan.</big></big></p>
<big><big></big></big>
<p><big><big>Moving on to the next ghastly scene; we’re still in
Afghanistan, we are shown four U.S. marines –fully outfitted in their
military uniforms with their big guns, oversized boots and an equally
oversized zeal for humiliating locals- standing over bloodstained
corpses of dead Afghans, and assuming the position one would normally
take at public urinals, in an astonishing display of utter contempt for
human life; we see our “heroes” engage in an old-school pissing contest
against the motionless corpses lying on the ground beneath their feet,
we hear one of the soldiers smugly exclaim “Oh Yeah!”, followed by a
chuckle, laughter then ensues throughout the group as their own
collective urine starts pooling underneath the dead Afghans, someone
off-camera jokes: “Have a good day buddy!”, someone else mumbles
something about “golden showers”, now the dead bodies are left covered
in blood, dust and soaked in their killers’ piss. A good day indeed for
democracy and common human decency.</big></big></p>
<big><big></big></big>
<p><big><big>The next scene takes us to a small village in Kandahar; a
local family is awoken in the dead of the night to the charging
footsteps of an American soldier, with his combat gear on,
juggernauting his way through the Afghan family’s house and into the
bedroom where the children are sleeping; and with more ease than a hot
knife cutting through melting butter; the soldier machine-guns the
sleeping kids like any red-blooded American on the hunt for third world
“terrorists” is expected to do, right before butchering the rest of the
family in the same ungodly manner, we see him loiter around the living
room for a little bit; he then wraps up the bloody corpses of his own
victims in blankets and sets them ablaze, a bonfire of yet another
victory for America’s “War on Terror”; the world rests easy that the
brave U.S. military has once again managed to rid us of yet another
dangerous group of sleeping women and children in Afghanistan. The
title card reads: the Kandahar Massacre.</big></big></p>
<big><big></big></big>
<p><big><big>Next we see a young man lying on the floor in a fetal
position, shackled wrists and ankles with a connecting chain between
them, trembling from the freezing cold of a darkened cell, his brain
feels like mush and the blood in his veins run like burning acid from
the last electroshocks session, there is almost not a single muscle in
his entire body that hasn’t taken a beating, he is covered from head to
toe in dark blue and red bruises and whipping marks; the pains of being
repeatedly kicked and sodomized with broomsticks transcend physical
injury into the realms of permanent psychological damage, for a brief
moment we get a glimpse of how the systematic breaking of a human soul
is done; living on a fixed daily diet of gentile torture, religious
humiliation, sleep deprivation, sensory torment and temperature
manipulation in exchange for forced “convenient” confessions, there is
little to reflect on in this scene; only ear-splitting screams of
bearded inmates in orange jumpsuits being tortured and the occasional
water-boarding session, the title card reads: Guantanamo.</big></big></p>
<big><big></big></big>
<p><big><big>The movie would end with Obama’s
“I-believe-that-America-is-exceptional” address to the United Nations
Assembly last year.</big></big></p>
<big><big></big></big>
<p><big><big>Yes, America has grown to be quite exceptional in its
brutality, ruthless invasions and savagery, America has an exceptional
knack for torture and plundering third world countries into endless
wars, and America has an “exceptional” track record that stretches as
far as the eye can see in its contempt for humanity and anything even
resembling human rights.</big></big></p>
<big><big></big></big>
<p><big><big><i><strong>Ahmad Barqawi</strong> is a freelance columnist
and writer.</i></big></big></p>
<big></big></div>
</font></font>
<div class="moz-signature">-- <br>
Freedom Archives
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San Francisco, CA 94110
415 863.9977
<a class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="http://www.freedomarchives.org">www.freedomarchives.org</a>
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