It is well
established that the United States is an insatiably warmongering nation, whose
propensity for waging war and glorifying it is legendary. The wars that the U.S. wages, sponsored and
spearheaded historically by its super-wealthy, super-crooked 1% (to use a
current terminology popularized by the noble Occupy movement trying to defang
Wall Street in these bloodthirsty times), are also consented to, or not
sufficiently opposed, by its largely soporific, propaganda-opiated and woefully
uninformed populace, whose delusions are bolstered by the machinations of the
very selfsame 1% super-wealthy warmongers that run the show.
The idea that the 1% (in reality,
more likely the 0.1%) controlled and spearheaded the imperial ambitions of this
country has been known since the age of slavery and the land-grabbing war years
of two hundred years or longer. Only the
other day, I watched a video clip of a radio conversation between a caller from
Texas and the astute debater and campaigner for human rights, George
Galloway. When Galloway labeled the U.S.
and U.K. as imperial powers, the Texan, in defense of the U.S. spreading
"freedom" around the world (an enormous Orwellian falsehood that is bandied
around even as the U.S. engages in its many acts of violations of territorial
and human rights of other nations of the world), demanded to know how much U.S.
territory had increased as a result of these "imperial" campaigns. Galloway thereupon offered up a tutorial to
the proud Texan (who classified the then 5,000 U.S. soldiers killed in Iraq as
not quantifiable as a "war") on the many faces of imperialism. That imperialism no longer needs to be seen
as territorial conquests. That imperialism
is simply the money-grabbing and power-grabbing by the ruthless and soulless 1%
using fear-mongering, bribery, brow-beating, enslavement, sponsored killings,
morale-breaking, and the application of the most lethal killing instruments
(WMDs) known to humankind, in order to continue its profiteering and obscene
amassing of wealth while keeping the have-nots in perpetual poverty and
subjugation. To accomplish this, direct
territorial acquisition is no longer necessary.
To do so might even be unacceptably unprofitable. After all, robbing other people's territories
by force (the standard imperial modus operandi (MO) down the ages) also
requires the unpleasant hassles of administering and maintaining law and order in
these regions, from near or far. History
has taught the imperial conquistadors that stealing, looting, robbing and
mass-murder are best carried out using remote control, from a distance, with as
little physical presence on the spot as possible.
Since 1945, the U.S. has applied the
above MO in its imperial missions with varying degrees of success around the
world. Outside of overt attacks and acts
of territorial aggression, such as the prolonged invasion and relentless
destruction of Korea and Vietnam, it has also consistently applied a variety of
covert means to keep poorer nations and peoples from acquiring a semblance of
social and economic upliftment, or democratizing- invariably because such
efforts at collective progress would reduce the ability of the U.S. to exert
political influence, access to the region's energy or other resources (having a
steady flow of materials and goods is, after all, a primary goal of imperialism
and profiteering), or its strategic goals of installing spying networks that
maintain a close surveillance operation upon other, trouble-making nations. Such
covert means have run the gamut from supplying arms and money to bands of
"rebels" in these regions (finding rebels in any set-up is a very effective
strategy; the reason this works so well is because human beings by nature
respond to the impulses of greed and power; thus, in every corner of the earth,
there are Judas Iscariot s, Mir Zafar s, Quisling s, Pinochets, Chalabi s and the like, waiting to sell
their nations and peoples for a few pieces of silver), to installing ruthlessly
dictatorial puppet regimes, assassinating popular leaders, and destabilizing
target governments by imposing embargoes, economic sanctions (merrily so, with
minimal human concern even when such inhuman acts have resulted in denying
little children basic medicine, or great loss of life- who will ever forget
Madeline Albright's famous pronouncement in this matter?), or establishing,
with god-like certainty, the supremely audacious and arrogant no-fly zones upon the air-space of
sovereign nations.
While the covert strategies have
served imperialism rather well over the years, and these have included
employment of spy planes at high altitudes, using satellites and a variety of
surveillance devices, it was not until the past 20 years or so, that the
imperial warmongers found a highly lucrative tool of hands-off targeted
killing, which could accomplish the killing of targets (preferably darker,
poorer and non-chosen ones) in remote places from the comfort of a
well-appointed monitoring room in the imperialists' backyard, calibrating and
pushing a button that would blow up, say, an entire school bus full of children
or other darkies, all while sipping a fine cup of cappuccino or chai latte.
I am referring, of course, to the
remote-controlled long-distance missile and bomb-launcher that flies over sovereign
airspace (though such bombing and killing would be criminal in the eyes of
human rights and civilization even if launched from the imperialists' domain)
and fires lethal explosives upon the unsuspecting
and unaware- the soulless, conscience-bereft, clean and non-guilt-inducing
killing device called the Drone.
Conceptually, this killing tool is like a dream-come-true to the
imperial enterprise. I am convinced it
makes the CEOs and business leaders of Lockheed, Grumman, Bechtel, GE, General
Dynamics, AT&T, Verizon, BP, ExxonMobil, Halliburton, Disney, and Rupert
Murdoch salivate at the prospect of eliminating the nuisance darkies of the
world with minimum capital investment.
Before going further, let me digress
briefly to shed some light upon the martial implications of the word Drone.
Ironically, drones are
stingless male bees in a beehive; the imperial 1% killer machine of choice, on
the other hand, specializes in blowing away hapless human beings at the flick
of a switch. Interesting terminology indeed
for a faceless, efficient killer destined to become a favorite of the criminal
imperial enterprise.
The lethal murder-weapon named Drone
resonates in my mind with the venerable martial instructor of the royal Kuru princes in India's enduring epic,
the Mahabharata. Dronacharya,
the legendary weapons and warfare instructor of the Kauravas and Pandavas,
was himself known to have been born outside the womb (this is one example of a
fertilization method in the Mahabharata that
resembles the in-vitro technique of
modern medicine). While he was an
outstanding warrior skilled foremost in archery, and was the teacher of such
pupils as Arjuna and others such as
the famed Ekalavya, Drona was nevertheless a deeply ethical
human being. This humane and moral trait
alone sets him apart from the ruthless, immoral, self-serving imperial killing
enterprise of the Western world, and in particular the versions of it I have witnessed
in the past 25 years. It is known that
during the battle of Kurukshetra, Drona was virtually unassailable. It was a treacherous white lie uttered by the
greatest prince of Dharma or Virtue, Yudhishthira, to the effect that Drona's beloved son Ashwatthama had died in battle (when in effect Yudhishthira was referring to the elephant by the same name, and
not Drona's son), that made a
grieving Drona drop his guard and
retract his weapons, causing thereby his assassination. That a soulless, stealthy weapon of death
bears a name similar to that of the noble Kuru teacher is both ironic and
tragic.
Another association I make in the
title of this essay is with the legendary warrior Meghnad from the Ramayana. Meghnad
(literally, the thunderous rumbling of clouds), a son of the Lankan King Ravana, had defeated Indra, King of the
gods in battle. Hence he is also known
as Indrajit (Victor over Indra). One of Meghnad's principal martial powers was
the ability to engage in battle from beyond the clouds; however, despite these
magical powers, he is eventually felled in battle by Lakshmana, brother of Rama.
The story of Meghnad, like that of Drona,
attests to the interplay between duty and ethical action. Wanton killing, and killing from misguided
hatred and self-assurance, are virtually absent from these tales.
On YouTube I came across a clip of a
Drone Awareness (Know Your Drones, I
believe they have labeled it; URL: http://www.knowdrones.com/ ) campaign that has been assembled through
the efforts of The World Can't Wait, a brave and conscientious anti-war group
along the lines of Code Pink and After Downing Street. In this effective (if intentionally
disturbing) clip, we see Nick Mottern, a long-standing anti-war campaigner,
roll a scale-model of a killer drone (a Reaper, or MQ-9, used extensively in
Pakistan, Afghanistan, Yemen and elsewhere) with multiple missile bays, mounted
on a platform with wheels to the front of the Museum of Modern Art (MOMA) in
New York City. Mr. Mottern's aim, it
appears, is at least two-fold. He calls
the Drone Awareness campaign Less
Distance from War (URL: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SbM2mZ8uYBw ) , and it works alongside another graphic, artistic portrayal of the vicious
killing that is at the heart of warfare (called Images of War at a Distance), and in particular the kind aimed at
no organized or at least passably viable enemy of any sort, but simply under
the auspices of the War Industry which today more than ever runs the U.S.
government and others aligned with it in the Western imperial campaigns. The exhibit Images of War (At a Distance)
by Harun Farocki was sponsored by The World Can't Wait, and has been running at
the MOMA since January of 2012.
As both of the above exhibit and
campaign make clear, increasingly warfare by the War Industry has become
frightfully similar to video games.
Soldiers (who, except in extremely defensive applications, are to me
nothing more than trained assassins, and deserve little of the accolades the deceitful
War Industry trains people to offer) armed with these remote-controlled murder
weapons of choice can pick-off human targets at will, and dispose of them
gleefully as they do in video warfare games.
What has amazed me thus far is that,
as with much of the immoral, illegal, profiteering and wanton killing sprees
committed by the U.S. government in the past 9 years (with little change worth
writing about since the takeover in 2009 by the other half of the War Industry
partnership, the Democratic Party) in
protest of which there has been little mass action in this country, there has
been no fundamental concern or all-out outrage regarding the use of these
remote-controlled WMDs in killing without the slightest accountability any
number of innocent human beings in different parts of the world. The complete imperial disregard for
international law or any humanitarian concerns, and evident immunity from
prosecution by some international body of accountability (such as the generally
defanged and ineffectual International Criminal Court) has been evident for the
past 65 years or longer. These
trivialities simply do not apply to the U.S. or its divine allies.
In the midst of such absence of
outrage, it was somewhat encouraging for me to discover the efforts by Nick
Mottern, as cited above, or a few articles recently in Counterpunch on the subject.
Notable among these are The Drone
and the Cross by Brian Terrell (URL:
http://www.counterpunch.org/2012/04/05/the-drone-and-the-cross/ ),
and Assassination by Drones by David
Model (URL: http://www.counterpunch.org/2012/04/05/assassination-by-drones/ ). It may be cause for at least the vanishing
hope that someday the civilized world (and that may not necessarily imply the
Western world, whose claim to civilization Mahatma Gandhi had famously
questioned many decades ago) might put an end to these all-too-real war games,
and uninterrupted state-sponsored criminal acts by the wealthy and the mighty
upon humanity, and eliminate, once and for all, the limitless WMDs in the
possession of the Western Industrial Killing Machine.
In his compelling campaign, Nick
Mottern shows an actual video outtake of a missile being launched upon a
pick-up truck or van somewhere on a roadway in Pakistan or Afghanistan. Two video games operators, tucked away in a
criminal's den somewhere in paradise, carefully run down the checklist of
pre-launch procedures (as though they were launching a rocket to Mars), then a
lovely hand with manicured fingennails resolutely presses a button, and Voila! With a second or two, we see a vehicle
carrying human beings simply explode in a cloud of smoke and fire. The professional killers from the War
Industry have achieved excellence in hands-off extra-judicial killing a Josef
Mengele could only dream about. To drive
the ghastly point home, Mr. Mottern has also equipped his audio visual display
with appropriate electronics that show sophisticated Manhattanites how at that
very moment they may be in the cross-hairs of the viewfinder mounted on a lethal
missile launcher in the sky.
Mr. Mottern, a caring human being
whose ethics trouble him as they should all decent human beings, conducts
on-the-spot interviews with several urban and urbane Manhattanites. While we observe mild abhorrence on the part
of a few, the majority in my view are either shown to be blasà © about this 1%
murder strategy, while a fair number actually gloat about how the divinely-placed
Americans are under attack (statistics in time and space greatly put the lie to
this oft-repeated lie, but that is a different discussion) by those evil-doers, and therefore killing them
and their children is America's divine mission.
That the imperial war industry has so conditioned great numbers of human
beings to believe these monstrous assumptions only goes to show how effective
their profiteering and killing enterprise is.
I do like to believe that America's
imperial hubris, and runaway consumption of the world's resources like mindless
gluttons will not last forever. However,
for the sake of the human civilization, and the rights of humanity everywhere
in the world, people need to be sufficiently educated about and made aware of
the ruthless face of the War Industry, and that both parties in the American
duopoly are equally culpable in committing these perpetual war crimes, decade
after decade. Such awareness, one hopes,
will someday build up resistance that will shut the War Industry and the
Profit-Making CEO-coddling Industry down once and for all.
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