NOTHING TO SAY

Deapair, despair, despair.

WHAT GOOD THINGS $52,000,000,000 A YEAR COULD DO


First, thank yowould long ago have been pushed off the world at the South Pole.u, Edward Snowden and Chelsea Manning, for the brave and immensely valuable service to the world which you have provided.

Second,  rhank you, Washington Post, for printing stories about our disastrous country.

Third, what could the United States government do with $52,000,000,000 a year to make the United States a better, safer place?  Or to relieve poverty and despair in the "third world"?

It occurs to me that the United States is perhaps the first "fourth world" country.  We are the biggest negative influence on the world, the most dangerous country in the world, and the largest debtor nation--the biggest bankrupt--in human history.

If it weren't that the United States has thousands of nuclear weapons and a unique record of having used them, the United States.

I have absolutely no faith that the United States can ever be a decent nation, and sometimes I have little hope that the rest of the world can survive in a world which includes the United States.  But individuals like Chelsea Manning and Edward Snowden give me some hope, and nations like Germany make me believe that civilisation is possible.  And lots of young people, all over the world, help me to think beyond the dangerous disaster that the United States has become in my lifetime.

                                                                   Bert G. Hornback

Emeritus Professor of Engllish, University of Michigan
Captain, United States Marine Corps (resigned)

WHEN CRIMINALS IMPOSE THE LAW

WHEN CRIMINALS IMPOSE THE LAW

            The United States has been violating international law for years now, invading Vietnam, running its proxy war against Nicaragua, trying repeatedly to assassinate Fidel Castro, invading Grenada, bombing Libya.

            Chelsea Manning revealed American war crimes in Afghanista, and instead of prosecuting the murderers the United States tried—and convicted—Manning.  In fact, he was convicted before he was even brought to trial, before his months and months of torture at Quantico began:  President Obama declared that Manning had “broken the law.”  The American news media reported this statement—and the President didn’t even bother to deny he had said it.

            For the past month, the United States has been trying to trap William Snowden, who has revealed more American crimes:  this time, egregious electronic spying.  Does the United States apologise?  Of course not.  Instead, it bullies everybody in the world to try to get its hands on Snowden.

            “We won’t execute him,” the United States government officials promise.  No, but they might send him to their illegal concentration camp at Guantanamo, and torture him for the rest of his life.

            And now the United States is threatening Syria.  According to the Americans, the Syrians  may have used poison gas on dissidents—whom the United States supports.

            The United States has used nuclear weapons (twice), and napalm (for five years) in Vietnam.  Lieutenant William Calley ordered his platoon to kill all the people in the Vietnamese village of My Lai—and led his troops in doing it; and though he was court-martialed and convicted of mass murder, he was released and allowed to go home.  Henry Kissinger and Richard Nixon did a month’s saturation bombing of Cambodia  for Christmas of 1972.  In 1992 the United States buried hundreds of Iraqi soldiers alive in the desert sand (General Colin Powell ordered that).  And in the Americans’ current (and continuing) war in Afghanistan and Pakistan, they use drones to kill people—who are always reported to have been “enemy combatants.”

            Sure.  The whole world is America’s enemy.  The line runs straight from  Athens to Rome to the United States.  Gengis Kahn, Napoleon, Hitler, Hirohito—they were all minor megalomaniacs.  But  Athens and Rome—at their worst—are the only rivals to the United States.

            And President Obama wants to attack Syria. 

WAR AGAINST WAR

What does it mean?  Mr. Obama is engaged in wars and  wars against somebody--he doesn''k know whom--in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Pakistan, and he threatens to go to war, now, against Syria.

His predecessors in the last fifty bloody years have gone to war against Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Nicaragua, Libya, and Grenada.  They tried (1958) to have a war in Lebanon, and they tried more than thirty times to assassinate Fidel Castro.  They would love to go to war against Venezuela.  They have been engaged in wars in former Yugoslavia,and  in Somalia.

My whole life has been America-at-War.  World War II, the Korean War, the invasion of Lebanon (I participated in that one--but nobody would fight with us), Cuba |(constantly against  Fidel Castro's Cuba).. Vietnam, then Laos and Cambodia.  Nicaragua.  Carter tried to invade Iran, to rescue 40 or so CIA agents; we couldn't identify them, or how many of them they were, because they were all CIA agents using multiple passports.

I had a big-mouthed, intelligent, stupid friend at CIA in the 60s and 70s.  He was proud of his work, and--vanitas vanitatus--loved to talk about what he was doing.  When, as the agent assigned to the Vatican desk (???) ; he recommended that the US take Berlin by force, for this,  he was promoted--to the Vietnam desk. |He claimed that the CIA started training CIA infiltrators in Vietnam in 1962.

Vietnam.  (Does anybody remember Lt. Calley?  He was convictged of mass murder, but then released..)
Napalm?  (Dow Chemical Company--the Napalm people--gave the University of Michigan a very fancy chemistry building once Robben Fleming had retired as presidennt of the university.  Mr. Fleming would not have accepted their money--but when President Fleming retired, Harold Shapiro--his craven successor-- accepted Dow's gift!)

Continuing the violence, the aggression:  the Christmas saturation bombing of Cambodia--and Gerald Ford's incursion into North Vietnam.

If you have thousands and thousands oif nuclear bombs, and a record of having used them--twice--people are scared of you.

Once the USA got out of Vietnam, it got interested in Central America.  Nicarasgua.  Ollie North, Kissinger, Nixon.  The funding of the "Contras," a nurderous revolutionary army dedicated to the overthrow of democracy..

Oil in Iraq.. According to Americans, "demooracy" means capitalism.  And  in the United States, wanting more oil justifies a war.  So after George I's war for Iraq;'s oil, and since then  Clinton's bombing of Basra, and then Somalia, and  his  stupid bombings of poor civilians in the Balkans--we comr back to Iraq  with idiot George II ("Saddam Hussein tried to kill my daddy!") and the war that Obama inherited, and expanded, and expanded, and expanded, and expanded.

And now Obama wants to attack Syria.

Not since Rome, or Athens, has the world known such vicious, brutal, stupid,, mean,  murderousness as America.leads us with today.

God bless America?

                                                              Bert Hornback .