San Diego Union Tribune: Immune to outrage?

[question everything]

UNION-TRIBUNE EDITORIAL

Immune to outrage?

Early reports from Haditha are horrific enough

May 31, 2006

Terrible atrocities and other crimes against humanity have been the byproducts of many wars. Especially when you inject an army into a civilian environment, some very bad things can happen.

Yet that doesn't mean Americans should become so immune to these horrible occurrences that we fail to register outrage whenever and wherever they surface. Were that to happen, we would be no different than the tyrants, bullies and evildoers we hunt down around the world.

Just based on what we already know, Americans should be outraged over reports that a handful of Marines based at Camp Pendleton and now serving in Iraq killed at least 24 civilians last November in the insurgent stronghold of Haditha. Americans should be outraged that, according to the results of a preliminary inquiry, the Marines may have been motivated by nothing more noble than vengeance over the killing of a fellow Marine. And, not least of all, Americans should be outraged that they are just learning about all this because Time magazine obtained photos showing dead women and children and obtained quotes from Iraqis who said the victims were innocent.

(snip)


This isn't idle speculation. It's the voice of experience talking. Those Americans who remember the ghastly My Lai massacre during the Vietnam War can be forgiven for drawing parallels. Earlier generations have seen a variation of this movie before, and it doesn't end well – not for the soldiers who were involved, and not for the country they were sworn to serve.


Find this article at:
http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20060531/news_lz1ed31top.html

[xchrom]

1. ok -- we were outraged by the millions BEFORE the war started.

there has been no loss of outrage since then.

{i could go on about 00 -- but i won't}

i just hope the paper has a history of outrage as long as ours before being critical.

[question everything]

2. To put in perspective, this is a Republican supporting paper

through and through.. though more like the old GOP of Rockefeller and, yes Goldwater and less of the rabid DeLay, Gingrich and the old Confederate boys and Bible thumpers that have taken over the party.

[The Blue Flower]

3. My reply to the editor

Editor: Millions of us have been outraged from the start of the drum beat for war against Iraq, when it was apparent that there were no WMD and that we were being fed lie after lie about the reasons for launching an attack on an impoverished, oppressed people. The number of civilians killed is now estimated to be 250,000. This group in the White House was intent on a military assault in that area since they published the Project for a New American Century during the 1990s and called for "a new Pearl Harbor" to justify it. When will the media insist on investigations into the real reason so much death and destruction has been visited on the Iraqi people and our military? And when will the media stop giving credence to the exact same lame excuses for war with Iran and insist on multilateral negotiation?

[Doctor_J]

5. Nice

:thumbsup:

[MindPilot]

7. Good letter!!

As you may know, The very right-wing San Diego Union-Tribune has been a cheerleader for the Iraq war since the very beginning. They, like the rest of the corporate media, did their part spreading the lies during the rush to war. They supported the energy companies while Enron was screwing San Diego.

The crimes of the UT editors against the people of California are too long to list; they should be hung for treason.

[Jack Rabbit]

8. Just a small nit

PNAC did not call for a new Pearl Harbor. They observed that it would take something like a new Pearl Harbor to mobilize US public opinion toward adopting their program for building expense new defense systems.

Ironically, the event which has served as a new Pearl Harbor didn't provide a very good argument for PNAC's arms program. Expensive missiles aren't going to stop terrorists hijacking passenger jets with box cutters. Airport security will.

[Jack Rabbit]

4. The neocons have the US on outrage overload

Abu Ghraib had us outraged, but we still haven't even questioned the real perpetrators. In fact, the Senate confirmed one as Attorney General.

It's pretty hard to get outraged over a single war atrocity, even the deliberate murder of civilians, when the war itself is violation of international law on its face: an outright war of aggression whose rationale, colonial piracy, dare not speak its name. Those responsible for the war manipulated intelligence and distorted and even fabricated facts to present a false rationale that they knew was a pack of lies. Now that is what is outrageous.

Next to that, even something as horrific as the Haditha massacre seems like petty crime.

Of course, those responsible for the massacre should be nailed to the wall; nevertheless, it will seem hollow if Bush and the other neocon thugs aren't on the dock somewhere.

[MindPilot]

6. The editors of California's premiere mouthpiece for the right

don't have the credibility of a skid row loan shark. For them to suddenly discover outrage in how the US conduct its military affairs is almost laughable.