Man's Love Affair With Carnage

Slaughter in Afghanistan

"The common good of a collective -- a race, a class, a state -- was the claim and justification of every tyranny ever established over men. Every major horror of history was committed in the name of an altruistic motive. Has any act of selfishness ever equaled the carnage perpetrated by disciples of altruism? Does the fault lie in men's hypocrisy or in the nature of the principle? The most dreadful butchers were the most sincere. They believed in the perfect society reached through the guillotine and the firing squad. Nobody questioned their right to murder since they were murdering for an altruistic purpose. It was accepted that man must be sacrificed for other men. Actors change, but the course of the tragedy remains the same. A humanitarian who starts with the declarations of love for mankind and ends with a sea of blood. It goes on and will go on so long as men believe that an action is good if it is unselfish. That permits the altruist to act and forces his victims to bear it. The leaders of collectivist movements ask nothing of themselves. But observe the results." -- Ayn Rand

It is a truth of life that those who complain most about a threat are often most adept at employing it! This is the case today where terrorism and mass slaughtering of innocent human lives are concerned. As elucidated by Ayn Rand, this is especially so when religious or altruistic motives are claimed to be the justifications for what are otherwise clear and unmistakable acts of barbarism and pure savagery! When those on the receiving end are despised as savages, evil or in some way less than human, then there is no limit as to what may be justified in the minds of the perpetrators of a 'humanitarian' war! As an accompanying article bears out, the West - led by the 'Roman Empire' of our time - has a sordid history of massacring whole civilizations both for resources and to extend their hegemony using fear!

The recent massacre of 16 or more women and children asleep at home has refreshed our memories! Once again the specter of a crazed 'lone gunman' has been offered up as a scapegoat on whom to pin the insane crime, though, as another article reminds us disparagingly - "we have heard it all before"! But reports from local survivors are already surfacing revealing a blatant coverup for damage control! Those who play act at being the world policeman in reality spread murder and mayhem far and wide!

So who then are the terrorists - those who sit at home trying to defend themselves and their country from invading armies, or they who set out to 'civilize' the world and to remake it in their own image? As Ayn Rand put it: "who starts with a declaration of love for mankind and ends with a sea of blood"!

Who Are the ‘Terrorists’?

Report: More Than One Shooter in Afghan Murders

Murder in Afghanistan, the Coverup Begins (updates)

American Massacres Have Been Common for Centuries

The Myth of the Fair and Benevolent State: Policing the World

US Marines at Huế - TET 1968

   

DESERTPEACE

 

Desertpeace

AMERICAN MORLOCKS: ANOTHER CIVILIAN MASSACRE AND THE SAVAGERY OF OUR SOLDIERS

March 13, 2012 at 15:22 (Afghanistan, Collective Punishment, Corrupt Politics, Guest Post, Middle East, War Crimes)

American Morlocks:
Another Civilian Massacre and the Savagery of Our Soldiers

By Nima Shirazi

*

The bodies of Afghan civilians loaded into the back of a truck in Alkozai village of Panjwayi district of Kandahar (AFP)

“Great shapes like big machines rose out of the dimness, and cast grotesque black shadows, in which dim spectral Morlocks sheltered from the glare…there was an altogether new element in the sickening quality of the Morlocks — a something inhuman and malign…I wondered vaguely what foul villainy it might be that the Morlocks did under the new moon.”
- H.G. Wells, The Time Machine, 1895

Nearly eight years ago, on April 1, 2004, former speech writer and Special Assistant to Ronald Reagan, Peggy Noonan wrote an articlefor the Wall Street Journal, where she was a contributing editor. It began like this (emphasis in original):

The world is used to bad news and always has been, but now and then there occurs something so brutal, so outside the normal limits of what used to be called man’s inhumanity to man, that you have to look away. Then you force yourself to look and see and only one thought is possible: This must stop now. You wonder, how can we do it? And your mind says, immediately: Whatever it takes.

The brutal, inhuman event she was referring to was the killing in the Iraqi city of Fallujah of four American civilian contractors, whose SUV was ambushed by rocket-propelled grenades the day before.  The four men, all employees of the infamous mercenary outfit Blackwater, were shot, their bodies burned, mutilated, and dragged through the streets in celebration.  The charred corpses of two of those killed that day were strung up on a bridge over the Euphrates River.  The news, and accompanying photographs, sent shockwaves of horror and disgust through the United States and prompted endless editorials from coast to coast.

Noonan described “the brutalization of their corpses” as “savage, primitive, unacceptable” and decried that the “terrible glee of the young men in the crowds, and the sadism they evinced, reminds us of the special power of the ignorant to impede the good.” She wrote that the Iraqis responsible for such gruesome actions “take pleasure in evil, and they were not shy to show it. They are arrogant. They think barbarity is their right.”

White House spokesman Scott McClellan condemned the killings as “despicable, horrific attacks” and “cowardly, hateful acts,” saying, “it was inexcusable the way those individuals were treated.” He called those responsible for the deaths “terrorists” and “a collection of killers” and vowed that “America will never be intimidated by thugs and assassins.”

A few days later in the San Diego Union-Tribune, editor Robert J. Caldwell wrote of the “grisly horror,” the “shocking slaughter,” the “barbarism” and “butchery,” the “homicidal hatred,” and insisted that “if we permit atrocities like the one in Fallujah to drive the U.S.-led coalition into retreat and premature withdrawal” and “[i]f we falter in Iraq, we let the mob in Fallujah win.”  Similarly, Noonan suggested,

It would be good not only for elemental justice but for Iraq and its future if a large force of coalition troops led by U.S. Marines would go into Fallujah, find the young men, arrest them or kill them, and, to make sure the point isn’t lost on them, blow up the bridge.

Whatever the long-term impact of the charred bodies the short term response must be a message to Fallujah and to all the young men of Iraq: the violent and unlawful will be broken. Savagery is yesterday; it left with Saddam.

In fact, in retaliation, savagery returned with a vengeance as United States Marines immediately bombarded Fallujah, killing over 600 Iraqis, most of them women, children, and the elderly in the veryfirst week of the assault in early April 2004, eleven months after George W. Bush declared “Mission Accomplished.”  By the end of the year, after two massive assaults on the city by the U.S. military, over 2,000 Iraqis, including hundreds of women and children, had been killed by American soldiers, thousands more injured and at least 300,000 displaced.

Such is the American capacity for blood-thirsty revenge.

Read More: