And the media often is involved in the “coverup”.
In Indonesia the CIA orchestrated rebels and then a coup that resulted in the killing of over 3 million locals. And mainstream American media were involved in the cover up.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/CIA_activities_in_Indonesia
https://www.workers.org/indonesia/chap2.html
https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2017/10/th...
Other massacre examples that had coverups and denials:
Gotta say this article goes above and beyond to document what happens in these pointless permawars used to justify (U.S) military spending.
Greenwald and the intercept reached an irresolvable position regarding publishing standards, so they went their separate ways. Greenwald now publishes elsewhere.
You seem to be implying a publication exercising their editorial privilege is proof that they lack integrity. Maybe the intercept is in fact a corrupt publication, but that depends entirely on your judgement of their decision not to publish what Greenwald wanted to publish.
We really have learned nothing from Vietnam. There, too, unrestricted murder of children was justified as removing future enemies.
And at no point since this madness started has there ever been a declaration of what "victory" looks like.
But yeah, let's celebrate the troops! Hooray for our warriors who "keep America safe". Let's pour even more money into this madness and wave the flag, shall we?
I often wonder where passionate distrust of the government has emerged from in recent years, and it is probably things like this which disillusion readers.
> Actions like these damage American moral authority in the region
America (well, technically, the federal government of the United States of America) has not had an ounce of credibility in 15 years, at least.
It's laughable to assume otherwise.
The USA has 5% of the global population. The rest of the 95% of the globe's population harbors no illusions about "American moral authority".
This article, and the story it contains, is abhorrent. Disgusting. Saddening. America is breeding, and paying, war criminals.
I have friends/family in the military. I don't talk to most of them anymore.
How can I pretend to be friends with people who are part of a system of global oppression, murder, and violence?
You're part of a system of African child slave labor.
Nobody ever faced consequences for any of it.
I gotta be honest, the idea that things like this "damage American moral authority" is just such a purely America-centric view. Americans truly have no idea how they are perceived by the rest of the world. Across the globe, polls consistently show America is viewed as the greatest threat to world peace.
[1] although the very puerile "it's no fun ruling unless the ruled know you're doing it" is the only explicit answer the book gives to the question posed by where Goldstein's text is left hanging: of what does "...the original motive, the never-questioned instinct that first led to the seizure of power and brought doublethink, the Thought Police, continuous warfare, and all the other necessary paraphernalia into existence afterwards..." really consist?
That's precisely how it's done in China and North Korea, as well as many other places, and almost every terror regime in history. It's also used in America whenever prosecutors / prison operators want to "send a message."
There's great value in keeping a population cowed when a small percentage of them can recount the horrors they've suffered for disobedience to authority. Execution is only reserved for actual threats to the regime, and the odd show trial.
The main account about this is in the last chapter of Bellum Gallicum, probably written by one of his lieutenants. A translation to English: https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Commentaries_on_the_Gallic_Wa... from the Latin: http://www.thelatinlibrary.com/caesar/gall8.shtml#44
> Real regimes don't mildly torture problematic people and then keep them around at length
"Mildly torture"? Did we read the same book? The torture in 1984 was as systematic and torturous as possible. Of course it's fiction, but nothing mild about it. Also, death squads are used by regimes that are unstable or fighting for power. Like in afghanistan. The totalitarian state described in 1984 was the opposite of afghanistan - completely secure.
Also, Smith wasn't in the "real world" with a "real regime", it's fiction. I hope you realize that. He is narrating a fictional world. So it's rather absurd to claim that he is an unreliable narrator because he isn't narrating the real world. By that logic, every narration in fiction is unreliable and as a consequence makes the claim about unreliable narration absurd.
For a classical tyranny were deaths squads are almost never necessary, because mass control is extremely efficient, "Brave New World" is better suited.
It seems 100% counterproductive. It looks like checks and balances don't work that well after all.
I'm starting to see the benefits of small government. The case for a decentralized, citizen-driven monetary system is also increasingly strong. Reduction of government and monetary reform must go together or else we risk corporations or some other large bureaucratic organisations replacing the government and end up doing the same kinds of senseless things.
An economy should not support such massive and immoral waste of human lives and productive capacity.
> The period in which The Intercept documented the escalation of violence in Wardak falls neatly between the first round of formal U.S.-Taliban talks in late 2018 and the signing of the Doha agreement early this year. The rate of 01 night raids, and the number of civilians killed as a result, fell dramatically last winter and stopped almost entirely this spring.
And why would anyone need to draw their "own conclusions" when Greenwald has been very explicit as to why he left.
"The period in which The Intercept documented the escalation of violence in Wardak falls neatly between the first round of formal U.S.-Taliban talks in late 2018 and the signing of the Doha agreement early this year."
I can hardly say I know enough to clear Bush or Biden of using death squads, but it does seem like the major escalation and change in tactics occurred between January 21, 2017 and today.
The war is not black and white; good versus evil. Almost nothing in the world is that simple and straightforward. Do you honestly think it would become a great place to live if the US just withdrew?
This is not a competition to count up who did more worse stuff. We as a country have been caught in a slippery slope with no easy completely morally correct way out. The fact is that we are in the war now and playing monday morning quarter back does nothing.
I'm sure that our country didn't think their actions of having americans in saudi arabia would have pissed off Osama and the countless other hijackers bad enough that they attacked us on 9/11. But the fact is they did, then the Taliban provided safe haven for them and our only option to try to avoid similar attacks in the future was to go in and get rid of the safe haven. If we leave now, the taliban will take over and it will be a safe haven again. If we stay, our fellow americans continue to die in an ugly horrible war.
Where was the easy right morally correct answer in any of that that was readily apparent at the time?
