Nothing More Evil

Nothing More Evil

By David Swanson
Information Clearing House
Wednesday, October 03, 2012

A writer at the Atlantic named Conor Friedersdorf recently noted
the level of evil many have been brought to support:

"Tell certain liberals and progressives that you can't bring yourself
to vote for a candidate who opposes gay rights, or who doesn't
believe in Darwinian evolution, and they'll nod along.

Say that you'd never vote for a politician caught using the 'n'-word,
even if you agreed with him on more policy issues than his
opponent, and the vast majority of left-leaning Americans would understand.

But these same people cannot conceive of how anyone can discern
Mitt Romney's flaws, which I've chronicled in the course of the
campaign, and still not vote for Obama.

Don't they see that Obama's transgressions are worse than any I've
mentioned?

I don't see how anyone who confronts Obama's record with clear
eyes can enthusiastically support him.

I do understand how they might concluded that he is the lesser of
two evils, and back him reluctantly, but I'd have thought more
people on the left would regard a sustained assault on civil liberties
and the ongoing, needless killing of innocent kids as deal-breakers."

Not long ago, I attended a speech by Obama, along with thousands
of his adoring cheerleaders formerly known as citizens.

I asked him to stop killing people in Afghanistan, and the Secret
Service asked me to leave.

But, just now, I got a phone call from the local Obama office. They
had my name because I'd picked up a ticket to attend the speech.

The young woman wanted to know if I would come help phone
other people.

I asked if she was familiar with the president's kill list and his
policy of killing men, women, and children with drones.

She said she knew nothing about that but "respected my opinion."
She hung up.

Objecting to presidential murder is now an opinion, and willingness
to be aware of its existence is an appendage to the opinion.

If you don't object to presidential murder by Democrat, then you simply arrange not to know about it. Thus, in your opinion, it
doesn't exist.

Some of my friends at this moment are in Pakistan apologizing to
its government and its people for the endless murderous drone war
fought there by our country.

They're meeting with victims' families. They're speaking publicly in
opposition to the crimes of our government.

And my neighbors, living in some other universe, believe most
fundamentally, not that one candidate will save us, not that the
two parties are fundamentally opposed, not that a citizen's job
is to vote, not that war is all right if it's meant well -- although
they clearly believe all of those things -- but, most fundamentally,
they believe that unpleasant facts should simply be avoided.

So, in a spirit of afflicting the comfortable to comfort the afflicted,
here are a few from recent days:

WAR IS A LIE

We know that in the past "defensive" wars have been intentionally
launched by fraud or provocation.

We know that many in our government want a war with Iran.

We know that several years ago then-Vice President Dick Cheney
proposed disguising U.S. ships as Iranian and attacking other U.S.
ships with them.

We know that then-President George W. Bush proposed disguising a
plane as belonging to the United Nations, flying it low, and trying to
get Iraq to shoot at it.

We know that there was no Gulf of Tonkin incident, no evidence
that Spain attacked the Maine, no doubt that the weapons and
troops on board the Lusitania were public knowledge, no question
that FDR worked hard to provoke an attack by Japan, and so on.

And we know that Iran has not attacked another nation in
centuries.

So, it almost goes without saying that Washington warmongers
are contemplating ways to get Iran to make the "first move."

Assassinating scientists hasn't worked, blowing up buildings doesn't
seem to do it, cyber-war isn't blossoming into real war, sanctions
are not sanctioning armed resistance, and dubious accusations of
Iranian terrorism aren't sticking.

Exactly what do we have to do to get ourselves innocently attacked
by the forces of evil?

Crisis initiation is really tough. And it's very hard for me to see how
the United States president can get us to war with Iran.

The traditional way America gets to war is what would be best for
U.S. interests.

Some people might think that Mr. Roosevelt wanted to get us into
World War II. You may recall, we had to wait for Pearl Harbor.

Some people might think Mr. Wilson wanted to get us into World
War I. You may recall that he had to wait for the Lusitania episode.

Some people might think that Mr. Johnson wanted to send troops
to Vietnam. You may recall he had to wait for the Gulf of Tonkin episode.

We didn't go to war with Spain until the Maine exploded.

And Mr. Lincoln did not feel he could call out the federal army until
Fort Sumter was attacked, which is why he ordered the commander
at Fort Sumter to do exactly that thing which the South Carolinians
had said would cause an attack.

So, if in fact the Iranians aren't going to compromise, it would
be best if somebody else started the war.

This is serious advocacy for manufacturing a "defensive" and
"humanitarian" war.

This is not a war critic or a Yes Men prankster.

The position of most elected officials in Washington, including
the President, fits well with this.

That position includes the ultimatum that Iran must cease
doing what U.S. National Intelligence Estimates say it is not
doing, namely building nuclear weapons.

The goal at the bottom of all of this is war.

The purpose of the war is not related to any of the excuses for it.

The purpose is something else entirely.

But it's ugly, so it's easier not to look.

HUMAN EXPERIMENTATION

We often forget that war is the worst thing there is.

Hence our government's shift in policy back to outsourcing a lot of
the torture and insourcing the "cleaner" approach of assassination without torture.

Hence, also, our common fantasy that war can be used to solve a
problem that is somehow worse than war.

We also forget that torturing people can be crueler than
experimenting on them.

Torture has been given an acceptance in the United States during
the past decade that "human experimentation" has not.

So, we are still capable of a bit of shock when a story comes out
like this one:

During the 1950s and 1960s the U.S. Army sprayed zinc cadmium
sulfide, apparently including radioactive particles, in poor
neighborhoods in St. Louis and other cities, to test the results on
the people who unknowingly breathed it.

At the end of World War II, the U.S. military's Operation Paperclip
brought nearly 500 Nazi scientists to the United States to work on
U.S. weaponry.

Many view their influence on the nascent military industrial
complex as critical to its sadistic and sociopathic tendencies
ever since.

In fairness to the Nazis, it's possible that they simply fit in well,
serving the military of a nation with a long history of genocide,
slavery, torture, and public deception.

I came across a member of Veterans For Peace this week who's
been struggling many years as a result of experimental vaccines
and drugs given to hundreds of thousands of U.S. soldiers during
the Gulf War.

We also learned this week that every prisoner in the Guantanamo
death camp has been given experimental drugs without their
knowledge or at least without their consent.

And then there's this: "Congressional Probe Reveals Cover-Up
of 'Auschwitz-Like' Conditions at US-Funded Afghan Hospital":

"A congressional investigation has revealed a top U.S. general in
Afghanistan sought to stall an investigation into abuse at a U.S.
funded hospital in Kabul that kept patients in, quote, 'Auschwitz-
like' conditions.

Army whistleblowers revealed photographs taken in 2010 which
show severely neglected, starving patients at Dawood Hospital,
considered the crown jewel of the Afghan medical system,
where the country's military personnel are treated.

The photos show severely emaciated patients, some suffering
from gangrene and maggot-infested wounds.

For TV viewers of Democracy Now!, please be warned: these
images are extremely graphic and may be disturbing."

NOTHING MORE EVIL

Here's what I'm trying to get at.

If you try to think of something more evil than what we
are now doing, you'll fail.

Name your evil: destroying the earth's climate?

President Barack Obama flew to Copenhagen to single-handedly
derail any process for protecting the earth's atmosphere.

The only way in which to fantasize about greater evil is
quantitative, not qualitative.

We could drop more bombs.

We could starve more children.

We could experiment on more prisoners.

In fact, this is what Lesser Evilism amounts to.

A Lesser Evilist today is not choosing less evil policies, but the
same policies in what he or she hopes will be lesser amounts.

That might be a rational calculation within a polling place.

But living it prior to and after an election, apologizing and cheering
for one of two teams, as if self-governance were a spectator sport,
is nothing other than complicity in the most hideous forms of
cruelty and murder.

That complicity is insidious.

Evil begins to look like something else, because the Lesser Evilist,
within his or her own mind, comes to view the Lesser Evil forces
as good, if not glorious, if not saintly.



David L. Swanson is an American Activist, Author and Blogger at,
warisacrime.org

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article32606.htm