This is what the GWOT is really all about: war crimes and hatred

Check out this video posted on Live Leak:

On Live Leak this video is entitled "High Value Target (HVT) gets taken out".

What do you see?

I see an unarmed civilian running away.  Maybe it is indeed a terrorist, or some insurgency leader, but he is not dressed in any battle fatigue, nor does he appear to be armed.  In fact, let's assume that he is some kind of "High Value Target".  What do we see next?  The guy is clearly shot, which is confirmed by the voice of the soldiers recording it all on camera.  At this point, what we see is 

1) an unarmed person who is also

2) wounded and obviously unable to flee or resist

In other words, this person is considered as "hors de combat" which the Geneva Conventions define as:

A person is 'hors de combat' if:

(a) he is in the power of an adverse Party;

(b) he clearly expresses an intention to surrender; or

(c) he has been rendered unconscious or is otherwise incapacitated by wounds or sickness, and therefore is incapable of defending himself;

provided that in any of these cases he abstains from any hostile act and does not attempt to escape.

Not only can this man not run anymore, we can even hear the voice of the US solider saying "not moving now, stationary".

We then see several shots missing him until one hits the man in the head and kills him.

The deliberate execution of a person hors de combat is a war crime regardless of the actual identity of the murdered person.

What makes this all even more disgusting are the reactions in the comments section of Live Leak.  Here I just show a sampling which happened to be at the top of the comments section:

Clearly, the patriotic Neanderthals at Live Leak are absolutely delighted with this video.  And in spite of the obligatory and doubleplusgoodthinking sign at the top of the page opposing racial slurs, no such restrictions are placed on religious slurs.

What we see here is the very socio-psychological core of all the Imperial wars the USA has been waging for decades and, really, centuries: on one hand, murderous thugs who don't give a damn about any moral or legal principles of civilized mankind, and on the other, ignorant racist and bigoted brutes who engage in some kind of warped narcissistic projection and literally feel empowered by what "their" side can inflict on the "other" side.  The comment of "Armsdealer" is particularly revealing of the amazing "density of hate" (and ignorance) which can be packed into two short lines.

Wars of choice, wars of aggression, are fundamentally different from wars of liberation or defensive wars in that unlike the latter the former lack a moral or ethical basis.  This is hugely important: when a man fights for this country, nation, family or religion he does not need to demonize or dehumanize the enemy, nor does he need to come up with some convoluted logic to justify to himself and others why he is fighting. This is why for centuries man have come back from wars without turning into dysfunctional brutes.  But when is the last time the USA actually had to fight a war to defend itself against an enemy?  Even the American Revolutionary War does not qualify simply because it was fought by both sides over stolen land.  Hence the always present racist nomenclature used to dehumanize the enemy: spics, niggers, coons, injuns, gooks, ragheads, sand niggers, hajis, etc.

This is what this grotesque "Global War on Terror" does to people, on the battlefield and at home: its fills them with hatred and turns them into psychologically dysfunctional individuals.

Cowboy Fascism has a bright future in the USA

On May 27th, 2007 I wrote a piece entitled "Rudolph Giuliani - the face of American Fascism?" in which I described what I saw as a steady a rapid penetration of what I believed to be a fascist mindset in the US society.  This morning my son emailed me two video of some guy called Grady Warren, apparently a supporter of the Tea Party.  Please take a look at them:

I have absolutely no idea who this Grady Warren character is and, frankly, I don't care. Having lived in the USA for a combined total of 15 years now, I can tell you that he is a very typical example of the kind of fascism which is prospering here.

US Fascism cannot be a direct transposition of Italian, French, Croat or Spanish types of fascism, if only because the former all have their roots in a Roman-Catholic mindset and ideology which has little or no influence in the USA. US fascism has very different roots, what I would call Far West of "Cowboy Fascism".

The cowboy fascist is immensely proud of his ignorance, as shown by the "we no speekee Spaniish!" Tshirt (like anybody would suspect these folks of understanding - nevermind speaking - a 2nd language anyway...). This deep pride in being an ignorant hick is exactly what made folks like John Wayne or Ronald Reagan such American icons. Can you imagine either of these two speak Spanish, French or Japanese? Of course not! Or take the very popular song "Where were you when the world stopped turning" which features the following lyrics:"I watch CNN, but I'm not sure I can tell you the difference in Iraq and Iran, but I know Jesus and I talk to God" (I am not kidding you, check the full text of the song at the provided link!).  Again, this singer takes immense pride in being a dumb ignoramus, because, just as a typical cowboy, he believes that a "simple man" must be an ignorant one.  

Of course, fascism has always been the natural refuge of idiots, dimwits, ignorant and insecure imbeciles because, unlike other ideologies, fascism is *simple* and requires absolutely no form of study or knowledge.  This is why cowboys and fascism are a match made in heaven hell: both are the product of beer guzzling, simple minded, insecure and aggressive types.  Unlike the marxists who have read the Marx and Lenin, the anarchists who would read Proudhon or Bakunin, the North Koreans who would study Kim Il-Sung's Juche or the republicans who would read Montesquieu, Rousseau, Voltaire, Paine, Franklin or Jefferson, a fascist gets his world view from newspapers or electronic media only (the idiot box, mostly). Yes, I know, there are fascist books out there, but they are inevitably dumb and rather boring and, besides do fascists actually read them?

Here again, the development of US fascism is immensely and, I would say, naturally aided by the US corporate media which fosters an absolutely bottomless level of ignorance.  Add to this than on average folks in the USA watch something like 4 hours of TV each day, and you will see why 21st century's USA is the perfect "primordial soup" for cowboy fascism.

[Conversely, the idiot box is also the reason why the US patriot is totally terrified by what he sees as an "invasion" of Hispanics but is utterly oblivious to the fact that his country has already been reduced to what is a de-facto Israeli colony run by a puppet regime totally and unconditionally devoted to the racists ideals of Zionism: "the TV don't talk about that"]

When Grady Warren says "we love Sarah Palin because she is a female version of Ronald Reagan and for millions of men she is their fantasy wife" he is, of course, completely unaware of the fact that for the rest of the planet Sarah Palin is the caricature of the ignorant American, the object of endless jokes.  To each his own, of course, and if for the cowboy Sarah Palin is a "fantasy wife", that's fine.  After all, these cowboys will never have to host some "aliens" (that is how foreigners are referred to in the USA: legal or illegal "aliens") for dinner and his "fantasy wife" will never have to cook anything besides fried chicken, cole slaw, onion rings or a couple of steaks with mashed potatoes and gravy.  And she will most definitely never be expected to speak "Spaniish".

Far from being a handicap, the crass ignorance and stupidity of the cowboy fascist is a powerful weapon in his hands.  That makes it possible for him to deny not only climate change, but science in general.  It make is possible for him to fancy himself a "Christian" because he opposes abortion while supporting the death penalty.  Lastly, in makes him globally immune to the necessarily complex arguments of the groups he so much hates: liberals, progressives, socialists, Marxists, environmentalists, etc.  For the cowboy fascist all the categories are lumped into one single mass of unpatriotic and unmanly "socialists" whose perverting influence is a threat to his lifestyle and beliefs (here he is, of course, quite correct).

Before the first invasion of Iraq the cowboys knew little or nothing about Islam.  Sure, they "knew" that Muslims had this inexplicable hatred of Jews and that they were treating their wifes like camels, but that's about it.  "Sand niggers" and "rag-heads" did not really bother the US cowboy fascist.  Until 9/11 that is.  9/11 turned the otherwise extremely superficially "Christian" cowboy into a real religious zealots.  In the wake of 9/11 numerous (and well financed) religious organizations like sprung up, complete with mega-churches, dedicated TV channels (what else)!), and a strong sense of a newly found "Christian identity".  While the some Jew-hating denominations kept their hatred for Jews (amongst many other ethnic group), most of the post-9/11 cowboy churches were strongly pro-Zionist (Pastor Hagee's Christians United for Israel probably the best known).

The cowboy fascist now "fights" not only for his race or ethnicity, but also for "his" God.  He sees his country surrounded by threats on all sides.  From the south, millions of Chicanos are invading the USA.  In the north there are a few Canadian, sometimes ok, but with very socialist tendencies (and some of them even speak French!).  Europe is full of degenerate Euro-trash sissies who never can stand up and fight like real men.  Russia, as Sarah Palin says, is ruled by a head-rearing Putin and China is taking away 'our jobs'.  In the inner front, the country is being torn apart by homos, socialists, welfare parasites, pedophiles, niggers and drug dealing hippies.  But, just like John Wayne or Ronald Reagan in the movies, our cowboy fascist is ready to fight for his country: his trailer is full of guns, he has a gas mask, a Geiger counter and lots stored food in case "they" drop a nuclear bomb.  And should al-Qaeda or "UN soldiers" ever show-up in our cowboy's hometown, he has even got a terrorist hunting permit on all four of his SUVs.  Amen!

This is all, of course, very funny.  But the Tea Party is not such a joke; it has lost some steam recently, but considering the rapidly worsening economic situation of the US Empire and the abject betrayal by Obama of pretty much all of his campaign promises, I bet you that the Tea Party still has quite a future ahead of it, if only because the Koch brothers have poured millions of dollars into it.

Crass ignorance, insularity, economic misery, a powerful propaganda machine, xenophobia and a macho gun toting and flag waving 'patriotic' culture are all the ingredients needed to form the toxic brew of fascism.

This begs the question: why is the Wall Street Zionist corporate elite fostering all this?  What do Jews like the Koch brothers gain by financing xenophobic and potentially anti-Jewish sentiments?  It is quite simple, really.  First, since US fascism is deeply anti-state ("anarcho-capitalist" and "anti-statist" as the cowboys would say) it makes it possible to dismantle all the social structure built in the USA since the New Deal, all the regulation put in place since WWII and to globally free what Ed Luttwak calls "Turbocapitalism" from any limits on its greed and exploitation of the poor.  And while the former US middle-class is being turned into the new poor, cowboy fascism also designates an entire roster of evil enemies responsible for it all: Blacks, Chicanos, liberals, etc.  Basically, the wealthiest top 1% of the folks running the USA and turning the anger and frustration of the impoverished Americans away from themselves and re-direct it towards a simple, reassuring, world view in which a list of scapegoats are offered to the hatred of the cowboys.  And, in the meanwhile, the richer are getting richer, and the poor not only poorer, but angrier.

The US Empire is on a rapid decline, no doubt here.  But we should not expect that to affect the political realities inside the USA in a fundamental way.  This is a country were you can often see a homeless person proudly flying a US flag on the supermarket cart he had steal to carry his few possessions.  Mussolini could not have dreamed of having such a thoroughly brainwashed and therefore passive population to deal with.  There is a dialectical relationship between the decline of US Empire and cowboy fascism, a kind of positive feedback loop in which one always reinforces the other and vice-versa.  Cowboy fascism still has a very bright future ahead of it.

The Saker