Tim Wise, AlterNet
December 21, 2001

                     The reviews came in quickly. And to no one's surprise, the verdict was "two
                     thumbs down."

                     "Can you believe how ruthless this man is? How cold blooded?"

                     "That monster has no regard for human life."

                     "What kind of person laughs about the deaths of thousands of innocent
                     people?"

                     These are but a few of the righteously indignant comments heard over the
                     course of the last two weeks: the reactions of journalists, U.S. political
                     leaders, and everyday folks to the recently aired Osama bin Laden tape.
                     Therein, bin Laden appears to take credit for the atrocities of 9/11 and to
                     cavalierly dismiss any moral concerns about the loss of life involved.

                     To the extent the tape is an accurate translation, it is certainly a disgusting
                     display of ethical depravity. But really now, did we need grainy VHS
                     footage to demonstrate that Osama bin Laden was a thug? Or was its
                     dissemination primarily for the purpose of re-inflaming the American public?

                     Of course there is nothing so true about indignation as the simple fact that it's
                     usually applied in a highly selective fashion. So it was easy to condemn the
                     horrific rationalizations for brutality offered up by Soviet Commissars or
                     their proxies during the cold war, for example, but much more difficult to
                     apply the same moral calculus to the statements of America's allies: often
                     brutal dictators whose regimes we supported no matter how many innocent
                     civilians they butchered, tortured or "disappeared."

                     Certainly there is little reason to doubt that if someone had trained a video
                     camera on U.S. clients like Duvalier, Marcos, Somoza, Pinochet or
                     Suharto, we would have had the chance to be regaled with dismissive
                     rationalizations of murder from them as well. Inhumanity, cruelty and
                     barbarity, as it turns out, have never been deal-breakers for gaining the
                     support of the United States government, after all.

                     What is of course interesting -- or at least would be to a nation insistent on
                     something so mundane as consistency -- is how Americans react with horror
                     to the cold, calculating comments of bin Laden, and yet brush aside (or
                     better yet, fail to even learn about) the equally cold, calculating ways in
                     which their elected officials and other U.S. spokespersons have regularly
                     dispensed with human life, absent so much as a twinge of remorse.

                     After all, are the things bin Laden said really any more morally troublesome
                     than the comments of former Secretary of State Madeline Albright?
                     Remember, it was Albright who explained, also on camera, that even though
                     roughly half-a-million children in Iraq had died from U.S. sanctions and
                     bombing, ultimately, this cost was "worth it."

                     In fact, the calculation that civilian deaths are "worth it" has a healthy
                     pedigree, even extending to the Bush family itself. While George W. might
                     become apoplectic at the dismissive manner in which Osama bin Laden
                     shrugs off innocent lives, one doubts that he has ever lectured his father
                     about the same thing. This, despite the fact that when Poppa Bush was
                     asked whether capturing Manuel Noriega had been worth the deaths of the
                     thousands of innocent Panamanians killed by U.S. forces in 1989, he
                     responded that while "every human life is precious," ultimately "yes, it has
                     been worth it."

                     Are we to suppose that merely mouthing the words "every human life is
                     precious," somehow makes the acceptance of mass killing less
                     objectionable? More decent? Or instead, might not such a schism between
                     what we say and what we do be even more disconcerting than similar pap
                     spewing from the lips of bin Laden? At least Osama isn't a phony.

                     As we bask in our rage over the bloodthirsty ruminations of our current
                     Public Enemy Number One, perhaps we should also be willing to roll the
                     tape, so to speak, on any number of equally disturbing comments by red,
                     white and blue Americans.

                     Like the U.S. soldiers who bombed Iraqi forces even after they had
                     surrendered on the field of battle in Operation Desert Storm -- a certifiable
                     war crime -- and laughed about their actions, calling the strafing "a turkey
                     shoot," and likening it to "shooting fish in a barrel." As one of America's
                     finest put it: "It's the biggest Fourth of July show you've ever seen. And to
                     see those tanks just ‘boom,' and more stuff keeps spewing out of them ...
                     it's wonderful."

                     Or how about Ed Korry, Ambassador to Chile in 1973, when the U.S.
                     sponsored the overthrow of the democratically-elected government of
                     Salvador Allende, and replaced it with one of the most brutal dictatorships
                     in the hemisphere's history? Prior to Allende's victory, Korry was on record
                     as saying: "Once Allende comes to power we shall do all within our power
                     to condemn Chile and Chileans to utmost deprivation and poverty."

                     Or what of former Undersecretary of State, U. Alexis Johnson? In 1971, as
                     the U.S. seared the Laotian countryside with phosphorous bombs and
                     napalm, killing tens of thousands of civilians, Johnson described the slaughter
                     as "something of which we can be proud as Americans." He explained
                     further that, "what we are getting for our money there is, I think, to use the
                     old phrase, very cost effective."

                     Or how about Robert Martens, who served in the U.S. Embassy in Jakarta
                     at the time of the Indonesian coup that brought Suharto to power in 1965,
                     and resulted in the mass murder of roughly 500,000 people? In discussing
                     how the CIA provided the Indonesian military with a list of suspected
                     subversives to assassinate, Martens noted: "It really was a big help to the
                     Army. They probably killed a lot of people, and I probably have a lot of
                     blood on my hands, but that's not all bad. There's a time when you have to
                     strike hard at a decisive moment." Little doubt that the head of al-Qaeda
                     would second that emotion.

                     Then there's Fred Sherwood, a former CIA pilot who was involved in the
                     U.S.-led coup that overthrew the elected government of Guatemala in 1954.
                     Later he took up residence in the country and became President of the
                     American Chamber of Commerce there. In the late 1970's, as the United
                     States continued its two-decade long support of death squads and military
                     dictators, Sherwood could think of nothing wrong with their murderous
                     deeds: "Why should we be worried about the death squads? They're
                     bumping off the commies, our enemies. I'd give them more power ... The
                     death squad -- I'm for it ... Shit!"

                     And last but not least, what should we make of Dan Mitrione? Mitrione was
                     the former head of the U.S. Office of Public Safety in Uruguay. In that
                     capacity, Mitrione's job appears to have been instructing Uruguayan police
                     and military officials on how to torture their political enemies more
                     effectively. His favorite slogan, according to those with whom he worked,
                     was "the precise pain, in the precise place, in the precise amount, for the
                     desired effect." Since torturers need to practice their craft, Mitrione would
                     instruct his students to kidnap homeless beggars off the streets, so that he
                     could test out all manner of torture devices on them, including electric shock
                     to the genitals. Once he was finished with these torture models, they were
                     routinely murdered.

                     And yet in 1970, when Mitrione was himself kidnapped and killed by an
                     Uruguayan rebel group, Secretary of State William Rogers attended his
                     funeral, as did Frank Sinatra and Jerry Lewis, who staged a benefit for the
                     family. White House Spokesman Ron Ziegler said of Mitrione, that his
                     "devoted service to the cause of peaceful progress in an orderly world will
                     remain as an example to free men everywhere."

                     Yes indeed, the willingness to snuff out human life with absolutely no
                     remorse or sense of guilt goes back a long way. At the risk of spoiling the
                     patriotic mood, one might recall that the founding of this nation was
                     dependent on the butchering of millions of indigenous people, who were
                     typically dispatched gleefully by those "settlers" and pioneers who saw fit to
                     steal their land. So too were we dependent on the stuffing of black bodies
                     into the cramped bowels of slave ships, utterly indifferent as to how many
                     would die on the long trip from Africa to the Americas. And millions did,
                     while others laughed about it.

                     Ruthless? Cold-blooded? No regard for human life? To be sure, these
                     statements describe Osama bin Laden, and on that we can all agree. But so
                     too do they describe far too many of our own leaders, our own political and
                     military elites. Unless and until we show as much interest in condemning this
                     kind of bloodthirsty rhetoric from all quarters, and not just those defined for
                     the moment as our adversaries, we will continue to stand as hypocrites to
                     the rest of the world. We will continue to be seen as a people who don't
                     mean what we say. Or rather, as a nation that applies one standard of
                     morality to ourselves, and a completely different standard to everyone else.
                     And still we wonder, "why do they hate us?"
 

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