Opinion

he attacks in Paris have already created yet another distorting lens through which Western nations view reality darkly. The tragedy on the ground in the city of light is real enough, but the greater tragedy is the greater reality of assuming that the politics of endless war is some sort of answer to the vicious circle it creates and perpetuates. The impulsive rush to war is also a rush to ignore history and context: French colonial control of Syria ended less than 70 years ago, French bombing of Syria is intensifying. 

And then there’s Yemen. 

Yemen is a key to understanding the perverse puzzle of the Middle East morass. Yemen embodies the collective savagery that American policy unintentionally promotes and spreads.

As the culture of war, which has dominated human civilization for 5,000 years, begins to crumble, its contradictions become more evident. This is especially so in the matter of terrorism.

What is terrorism? Let us begin with some of the comments issued by Osama Bin Laden after the destruction of the World Trade Center:

“God Almighty hit the United States at its most vulnerable spot. He destroyed its greatest buildings. Praise be to God. Here is the United States. It was filled with terror from its north to its south and from its east to its west. Praise be to God. What the United States tastes today is a very small thing compared to what we have tasted for tens of years. Our nation has been tasting this humiliation and contempt for more than 80 years ….

It was my senior year in high school — many years ago — and I was seated, along with many of my football teammates, on the auditorium stage. It was a pre-game rally before 1500 classmates and teachers. The auditorium was filled with energy. The main speaker was a much revered former outstanding athlete at Central High School. A man in his 50’s, he spoke with passion about the upcoming football game. It was exciting! However, I found myself feeling revulsion as he concluded his speech by saying, “Go out there and Kill, Kill, Kill!”, repeating the last three words numerous times as the audience joined in.

“By God,” Bush said in triumph, “we’ve kicked the Vietnam syndrome once and for all.”

This was Bush 41, a quarter of a century ago, celebrating the terrific poll numbers his kwik-win war on Iraq was generating. Remember yellow ribbons? I think he had a point. “Vietnam syndrome” — the public aversion to war — still has a shadow presence in America, but it no longer matters.

Our official policy is endless bombing, endless war. No matter how much suffering it causes — over a million dead, maybe as many as two million, in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan — and no matter how poorly it serves any rational objectives, our official response to geopolitical trouble of every sort is to bomb it into compliance with our alleged interests. The cancerous “success” of this policy may be the dominant historical event of the last three decades. Endless war is impervious to debate; it’s impervious to democracy.

hat do you say about the blameless man who was held at the Guantanamo concentration camp for 13 years, without trial, without charges against him, without credible evidence that he had done anything remotely deserving of 13 years of torture and isolation, with no hope of anything remotely like justice?

We are all France. Apparently. Though we are never all Lebanon or Syria or Iraq for some reason. Or a long, long list of additional places.

We are led to believe that U.S. wars are not tolerated and cheered because of the color or culture of the people being bombed and occupied. But let a relatively tiny number of people be murdered in a white, Christian, Western-European land, with a pro-war government, and suddenly sympathy is the order of the day.

"This is not just an attack on the French people, it is an attack on human decency and all things that we hold dear," says U.S. Senator Lindsey Graham. I'm not sure I hold ALL the same things dear as the senator, but for the most part I think he's exactly right and that sympathy damn well ought to be the order of the day following a horrific mass killing in France.

Dear Editor,

Which world power can damage its own interests with the dumbest move? The contest will have you on the edge of your seats.

Here's the latest U.S. entry:

Last month, a raid by Kurdish forces supposedly freed ISIS prisoners, and those Kurdish forces posted a video of prisoners rushing out of a prison while gunfire sounded in the background. One U.S. troop was killed in the raid. U.S. media rushed to cover the story as a heroic act of benevolence. Non-U.S. media rushed to cover the fact that the "non-combat" troops, the so-called "advisors" whom the U.S. has in Iraq by the thousands were in fact engaged in combat.