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gulags...,
2003-10-30 16:18:34
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into the blackbox - rob-georgia.zip...,
2003-11-04 15:41:20
"If we have to, we just mow the whole place down, see what happens."
--Sen. Trent Lott (R-Miss.) suggesting policy alternatives for the Iraq occupation, 10/29/2003:
He is, of course, suggesting what in the past has often been a highly successful strategy. No doubt US successes in occupying fascist Germany and imperial Japan owe a great deal to the fact that virtually all urban centers had been carpet bombed, with hundreds upon hundreds of thousands of civillians in both countries having been slaughtered, starved, or otherwise destroyed in the process, leaving the remainders with little interest in spurring further violence by resisting foreign occupation: after all, that's just how you did things back then.
Likewise hiring local thugs to do the killing for us has been highly successful - Saddam Hussein or the Iranian Shah being two of many highly exemplary instances. Lott is merely suggesting what is standard practice and this sentiment should not be considered terribly shocking: the US has been as a matter of official policy literally "mowing down" Columbia for years, with as yet no immediate end in sight. The same is true for Russia's brutal war in Chechnya; China, Iran, Saudi Arabia, the Phillipines, and Cuba's relentless repression of their domestic populations; Israel's highly successful violence in the occupied territories; or the numerous US clients now controlling most of Afghanistan.
Nor should it be surprising that Senator Lott has explained this position in such openly frank terms. It's not unusual, one need merely look back on the Clinton administration - which set so many of the foreign policy precedents that the Bush administration has elaborated on - to find quotes that harken to this sort of apalling thinking:
"We did not think that kind of attack could do anything other than create a lot of refugees and cause a humanitarian problem. On the other hand, it always had the prospect of simplifying matters."
Other old favorites are Albright's "the price is worth it", in discussing the entrenchment of Saddam Hussein's power and the suffering of Iraqi civillians under US-UN sanctions, or Presidential hopeful General Wesley Clark, explaining the strategy of his humanitarian mission on the 'Today Show', described the drastic escalation of Serbian violence in Kosovo after the first days of NATO bombing as "entirely predictable at this stage".
Time for the longer Trent Lott: Trust Jesus. Enough violence can resign any population to their fate, and it is liberal sqeamishness about persuing the necessarily viscious attacks against innocent segments of any given population that draws these conflicts out indefinetly. Drop a couple nukes and people become much more cooperative towards your business and military ventures, trade and foreign policy agreements, nevermind the resource concessions. Seeking to minimize the impact of conflict upon civillian populations unnecessarily prolongs an inevitable nightmare, and anybody who argues that the world's greatest democracy should be held to higher standards than the brutal regimes it cooperates with in subjecting lesser nations has proven themselves to be traitors who don't trust Jesus. Trust Jesus and carry a big stick, or we'll mow you down too.
One should disregard that the nightmares aren't at all inevitable, that the standards are plainly elementary, and that for reasons of state Trent Lott doesn't really trust Jesus.
:: posted by buermann @ 2003-11-03 14:14:31 CST |
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