when you declare a state of war you get a war state
On Thursday March 10, U.S. District Judge Jack Weinstein threw out of court a class-action lawsuit filed on behalf of roughly 4 million Vietnamese people who have suffered birth defects, ailing health, and a poisoned rural economy as a result of American use of Agent Orange during the Vietnam war. "There is no basis for any of the claims of plaintiffs under the domestic law of any nation or state or under any form of international law," he wrote in his verdict. Furthermore, he outright dismissed the links between Agent Orange and the health problems of the Vietnamese represented in the lawsuit.
Wait a minute here. Wasn't Agent Orange supposed to poison organic life? It was devised as a means not only to "remove" the dense jungle that the Vietnamese used for cover against an invading army, but also to destroy farmland and otherwise demolish the moral and economic resistence of the Vietnamese population. It was a chemical engineered to destroy organic life. Arguably, it figured in a policy of chemical warfare which has yet to be matched on the planet. Dow Chemical, Monsanto Co., and others knew the effects of dioxin in AO, and indeed engineered these effects. Isn't that alone cause and support for the "claims" of the plaintiffs? Judge Weinstein’s decision argues that these companies were operating in effect under direct orders from the pentagon and other chiefs of staff. That they were operating under orders can no excuse, as the Neuremburg Trials following WWII demonstrated culpability even (and perhaps especially) during times of war.
You might counter that maybe the Vietnamese deserve their suffering for attempting to counter American imperial intentions. How dare they defend their own country and indeed their own health made deleterious as a consequence of this invasion, and then use the international and US courts to further this cause. It was war after all, and therefore wasn't it a time when much of what we, under peace, call human compassion disappeared like so much hot air?
Maybe it’s a given then, that countries will not allow their histories to burden their present budgets, although both Germany and Japan were held accountable for their aggression after the second World War. The American government certainly does not want to pay for the actions of a previous generation, and most certainly does not want to have to side with a group of foreign complainants against the interests of contributing members important to the military-industrial complex. At the very least, the transfer of wealth from American corporations to foreign citizens as represented by this lawsuit is definitely not allowable given the current state of the American economy.
More to the point however, the dismissal of this lawsuit seems aimed more at diverting corporate involvement in possible war crimes violations levelled against American forces that are currently operating in Iraq, Cuba, and Afghanistan. The last thing that many in the Bush government want to see happen is the imposition of a legal framework with which to judge or otherwise curtail their actions. For this reason, America has routinely avoided joining international courts, and rescinded their involvement in international arms control treaties. It seems likely that the Bush “everything’s on the table” strategy for foreign policy will only increase American military involvement in the Middle East, with the obvious consequence of an even higher number of human rights violations occurring.
With the knowledge that the events normally classified as war crimes will only continue, and may indeed escalate beyond all reason in the coming year, then the attempts by the Bush government to move the legal system in their direction seem logical enough. If, for example, Dow and Monsanto were indeed found guilty of war crimes(or even war profiteering, a crime which has become virtually a non-issue since WWII) for their involvement in the Vietnam war, then so too would Haliburton and its subsidiaries, who are building and supplying the ever-so-friendly prisons in Iraq where torture and murder has been normalized and systematized. So too would Lockheed-Martin, one of the principal contractors for the development and manufacture of real weapons of mass destruction, ie: the bombers and their bombs (which have to date killed roughly 120,000 Iraqi civilians), as well as the long-range tactical and ballistic weapons that the US seems poised to deploy in the Middle East.
It seems apparent enough that the American government is trying to legalize the actions that tend to be classified as war crimes. The first shot in this particular battle was the labelling of prisoners of war captured in Afghanistan as "Illegal Combatants", thus ostensibly removing from these POWs their rights as outlined in the Geneva Convention (if one were to follow the Bush train of thought, that is bureaucratic nomenclature supercedes rights to humanity). We might be able to interpret the Patriot Act as a secondary phase, by provisioning state authorities with the tools to control the domestic US population should any coming aggression against foreign populations foment Ukraine-style civil disobedience.
Vice President Dick Cheney used to control Haliburton, and so the circle of accountability seems to close in upon itself. Any rational observer might question a government’s simultaneous involvement in both corporate and military concerns, and wonder whether a corporate autocracy is indeed the way to allow the functioning of a state which calls itself democratic. In previous generations, it took major conflicts to separate those interests and impose restraints on the system; Japan, for example was forced to accept a new constitution to remove the power over government, economic, and military systems from one controlling interest. The Republican Hawks have a similar control over government, much of the legal process, and of course the military; this is course in addition to the corporate interests they either control directly or represent by proxy.
Allowing a legal framework for escalating violence, repression, and inhumanity can be interpreted historically as a prelude to the outbreak of a fairly major conflict. I myself think that the entire Middle East should seriously consider itself as game for the PNAC (www.newamericancentury.org) strategy. That alone should be regarded as the end of modernity as we know it.
Wait a minute here. Wasn't Agent Orange supposed to poison organic life? It was devised as a means not only to "remove" the dense jungle that the Vietnamese used for cover against an invading army, but also to destroy farmland and otherwise demolish the moral and economic resistence of the Vietnamese population. It was a chemical engineered to destroy organic life. Arguably, it figured in a policy of chemical warfare which has yet to be matched on the planet. Dow Chemical, Monsanto Co., and others knew the effects of dioxin in AO, and indeed engineered these effects. Isn't that alone cause and support for the "claims" of the plaintiffs? Judge Weinstein’s decision argues that these companies were operating in effect under direct orders from the pentagon and other chiefs of staff. That they were operating under orders can no excuse, as the Neuremburg Trials following WWII demonstrated culpability even (and perhaps especially) during times of war.
You might counter that maybe the Vietnamese deserve their suffering for attempting to counter American imperial intentions. How dare they defend their own country and indeed their own health made deleterious as a consequence of this invasion, and then use the international and US courts to further this cause. It was war after all, and therefore wasn't it a time when much of what we, under peace, call human compassion disappeared like so much hot air?
Maybe it’s a given then, that countries will not allow their histories to burden their present budgets, although both Germany and Japan were held accountable for their aggression after the second World War. The American government certainly does not want to pay for the actions of a previous generation, and most certainly does not want to have to side with a group of foreign complainants against the interests of contributing members important to the military-industrial complex. At the very least, the transfer of wealth from American corporations to foreign citizens as represented by this lawsuit is definitely not allowable given the current state of the American economy.
More to the point however, the dismissal of this lawsuit seems aimed more at diverting corporate involvement in possible war crimes violations levelled against American forces that are currently operating in Iraq, Cuba, and Afghanistan. The last thing that many in the Bush government want to see happen is the imposition of a legal framework with which to judge or otherwise curtail their actions. For this reason, America has routinely avoided joining international courts, and rescinded their involvement in international arms control treaties. It seems likely that the Bush “everything’s on the table” strategy for foreign policy will only increase American military involvement in the Middle East, with the obvious consequence of an even higher number of human rights violations occurring.
With the knowledge that the events normally classified as war crimes will only continue, and may indeed escalate beyond all reason in the coming year, then the attempts by the Bush government to move the legal system in their direction seem logical enough. If, for example, Dow and Monsanto were indeed found guilty of war crimes(or even war profiteering, a crime which has become virtually a non-issue since WWII) for their involvement in the Vietnam war, then so too would Haliburton and its subsidiaries, who are building and supplying the ever-so-friendly prisons in Iraq where torture and murder has been normalized and systematized. So too would Lockheed-Martin, one of the principal contractors for the development and manufacture of real weapons of mass destruction, ie: the bombers and their bombs (which have to date killed roughly 120,000 Iraqi civilians), as well as the long-range tactical and ballistic weapons that the US seems poised to deploy in the Middle East.
It seems apparent enough that the American government is trying to legalize the actions that tend to be classified as war crimes. The first shot in this particular battle was the labelling of prisoners of war captured in Afghanistan as "Illegal Combatants", thus ostensibly removing from these POWs their rights as outlined in the Geneva Convention (if one were to follow the Bush train of thought, that is bureaucratic nomenclature supercedes rights to humanity). We might be able to interpret the Patriot Act as a secondary phase, by provisioning state authorities with the tools to control the domestic US population should any coming aggression against foreign populations foment Ukraine-style civil disobedience.
Vice President Dick Cheney used to control Haliburton, and so the circle of accountability seems to close in upon itself. Any rational observer might question a government’s simultaneous involvement in both corporate and military concerns, and wonder whether a corporate autocracy is indeed the way to allow the functioning of a state which calls itself democratic. In previous generations, it took major conflicts to separate those interests and impose restraints on the system; Japan, for example was forced to accept a new constitution to remove the power over government, economic, and military systems from one controlling interest. The Republican Hawks have a similar control over government, much of the legal process, and of course the military; this is course in addition to the corporate interests they either control directly or represent by proxy.
Allowing a legal framework for escalating violence, repression, and inhumanity can be interpreted historically as a prelude to the outbreak of a fairly major conflict. I myself think that the entire Middle East should seriously consider itself as game for the PNAC (www.newamericancentury.org) strategy. That alone should be regarded as the end of modernity as we know it.
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