Author: JP Sottile

I wonder if there’s a number that demarcates the upper limit of acceptable civilian casualties in Gaza. Is it ten thousand? Twenty thousand? Thirty thousand? And how about dead children? How many children is Israel free to kill in trade for the children killed by Hamas, and how many non-combatants total can it kill in exchange for the elusive goal of “wiping Hamas from the face of the Earth”? Is there a number? Or is the acceptable number of non-combatants and children killed simply an as-yet undetermined statistic that will eventually be entered into a column on a spreadsheet in a soon-to-be dusty after-action report?

Of course, I ask these questions within the context of the Global War On Terror. The US piled-up hundreds of thousands of deaths in the wake of 9/11 … and even went to a country with no demonstrable connection to 9/11 to collectively punish them for something they didn’t do. The US also collectively punished the Afghan people with bombs and drones and a grinding occupation because of their geographical proximity to al-Qaeda. In the process, the US added the deaths of hundreds of thousands of bystanders to its own spreadsheet of vengeance. There really wasn’t an upper limit on the non-American casualties in any of Uncle Sam’s post-9/11 punitive pursuits, which is important because what the US did after 9/11 has become a model of contemporary war-making … that is, if the enemy is “terrorism” or “terrorists” or, in a stroke of marketing genius, if you are fighting the amorphous specter of “terror.”

Continue reading “The Foghorn of War: The Magic Word of War”

Reprinted from NewsVandal with permission.

Two decades of war. Two decades of profiteering. Two decades of killing innocent bystanders.

Two decades of surveillance. Two decades of detention and too many years of torture, undue process and profiling.

Two decades of hyper-patriotism.

Two decades of militarism, unrepentant Exceptionalism and religious righteousness.

Two decades of lies, deceit and self-delusion.

Two decades of unlearned lessons, unclaimed responsibility and willful ignorance.

Two decades later, and now the divisions, dictators and paranoia our oily empire supported around the world … are tearing this nation apart.

Twenty years ago today we had a chance to reflect on the question of “Why?” Instead we chose to ignore our own complicity in creating the demons unleashed by our imperial ambitions. We did not ponder or reflect. We bombed. We destroyed a nation and, in the process, murdered hundreds of thousands of people who had nothing to do with the event we used like a drug and wielded like a holy writ.

Today, two decades later, we are reaping what we’ve sown. Today, the empire is retreating abroad and rotting from within. Today we are reaping the bitter fruit of hubris.

Today marks two decades of madness.

JP Sottile is a freelance journalist, radio co-host, documentary filmmaker, and former broadcast news producer. Follow @newsvandal. Visit his website.

This is a really frustrating day for me. My coming of age politically and historically (and musically, for that matter) mirrored what was essentially one long GHW-Bush-infused scandal … beginning with the 1980 Presidential Campaign and the October Surprise that put a CIA man in the White House … which, in turn, gave birth to Iran-Contra … which then spawned the BCCI Scandal and dovetailed with the illegal arming of Iraq, a.k.a. Iraqgate … which ultimately led to the Gulf War. Then there was the 1988 Campaign, which gave us the Willie Horton ad and ingrained into my consciousness a deep anger about, and greater awareness of, the power of American racism. And finally, there was the Savings & Loan Scandal his son helped to start and, not coincidentally, also helped me to understand the banal, repetitive scam at the heart of America’s financialized economy.

In effect, my understanding of America was forged during the apex of George H.W. Bush’s career and my sense of American political power was perpetually informed by my often angry observation of his impact on America and the world. My life’s coincidental cohabitation with his ascendancy and use of power was like a long, drawn-out graduate seminar on the seedy underbelly of American empire and the use of covert means to alter the course of history at home and abroad.

Continue reading “GHW Bush’s Frustrating Funeral”