NO REMORSE "It Is Never Our Fault" (MUST READ: from Boston Globe)

[kpete]

DERRICK Z. JACKSON
No remorse
By Derrick Z. Jackson, Globe Columnist | January 18, 2006

WHEN TEENAGERS show no remorse for mistakes, we call in the therapist. When killers show no remorse, we want life sentences or death row. When the United States makes deadly mistakes, remorse is unnecessary, because, of course, it is never our fault.

Thinking we could nail Osama bin Laden's top lieutenant, Ayman al-Zawahri, our military launched an airstrike into a Pakistani town just over the border from Afghanistan. We smoked 18 people at a dinner that al-Zawahri was allegedly going to attend, but apparently skipped out on. The provincial government claims that four or five foreign militants were killed, but local witnesses said women and children were among the rest.

This is of small concern to the White House. President Bush has never apologized to the Iraqi people for the three years of carnage done in the name of weapons of mass destruction, weapons that were never found. Bush always dodges the need to show remorse on the premise that ''we are up against people who show no shame, no remorse, no hint of humanity."

He long ago maneuvered the self-absorbed American psyche to ignore our own inhumanity. Our bombs and bullets have now killed several times more innocents in Iraq than were killed during the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11. But the rationale for a remorseless occupation continues to be, as one senior White House official told me and a small group of journalists in November of 2003, ''There will be some civilian deaths. It will be nothing like what Saddam Hussein did."

http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2006/01/18/no_remorse/

[kenny blankenship]

1. Bush is a psychopath of course

unfortunately he's not the only one. We have a created a "no remorse" culture for ourselves with rationales for every crime, in order to continue with and justify our economy of human and environmental exploitation.
Killing without regret has become second nature, and lying about it later is also second nature, too if we even feel the need to deny or dissemble. In the cases of shredding the Constitution to spy on American citizens illegally and killing innocent people to get at enemies, Bush doesn't even feel the need to explain or apologize to American or world opinion for these actions.

[iamahaingttta]

7. It's even more f*cked up than that...

Any time a politician says something stupid, there's a huge outcry and he/she is forced to "apologize" for their transgression!

The latest one being Mayor Nagin in NOLA. He wants it to be a "chocolate city" which at worst is just a dumb statement. Next he has to get on the air with his tail between his legs and apologize. Of course if he had killed 30,000 people in another country, nobody would SEEM to care. And there's one of these stupid apologies every week, it seems. And, it's never for anything that REALLY matters, and they never seem to REALLY mean it!

This once great country of ours is F*CKED UP friends. BIG time!

[mindfulNJ]

2. nice one

I'm e-mailing this link to everyone I know. Thanks kpete.

[kpete]

3. Sad to start the day with this

but is was spot-on...

[DoYouEverWonder]

4. If the Boston Globe has turned against Bush

then it must be bad.

[Demeter]

5. Not the Globe--Just OpEd Columnist n/t

[TheCowsCameHome]

6. I think you are mistaking them for the Boston Herald

The Globe is seldom for Bush. They have one op-ed writer that is a kool-aid drinker, (Jacoby), all the others lean left if anything.

The Herald is a Rupert Murdoch rag one step above the supermarket tabloids.........

[marmar]

8. That's what I thought...

I thought the Globe was generally left-leaning, editorial-wise anyway.

[AllieB]

13. It's moved to the right lately

but it's still got some good editorial writers. The LTTEs though are often from wingnut apologists. It seems it's the same ones all the time too.

[DoYouEverWonder]

21. Ah thanks for the correction

I guess I had them mixed up.

[ComerPerro]

9. The ultimate irony is that we do this (supposedly) in the name of 3000

innocent Americans who were killed in a terrorist attack.

We say the attack was horrendous and unjustifiable because the killers needlessly targeted innocent civilians.

And we might be right, if we were actually going after those who were responsible.


But, instead, what do we do? We start a war with another country that takes time and resources away from the hunt for those responsible for 9/11. And we kill innocent people without remorse, all because "we have a job to do".

[raccoon]

10. The Junta never takes responsibility for anything.

Nothing is EVER their fault. Like an addict.

Unfortunately, this lack of responsibility has been "rolling downhill",
like fecal matter, as they say in the army.

Yet these same SOB's are quick as lightning to point the finger at others.

[G_j]

11. very well said

yes, we would consider even a fraction of such behavior a very serious problem in children.
Untruthfulness, bullying and sadistic behavior, no respect for the law, never accepting responsibility....

Our children can have no doubt we are dishonest hypocrites for raising this type of person to the highest office.

& them chickens gonna come home to roost.

[Martin Eden]

23. Coming home to roost

We MIGHT have killed a few low-level jihadis (though not the big shot we were after) along with the women and children.

HOW MANY jihadis will this attack spawn?

[The Witch]

12. k&r why is this logic so difficult for people to grasp!?

:mad:

[kpete]

14. To: The Witch

This is the crime
This is why we fight
Peace

[robbedvoter]

15. Always a Dem to bray with them - still want Bayh for 2008?

Senator Evan Bayh of Indiana, a Democratic member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, basically blamed Pakistan for the mistake. ''It's a regrettable situation, but what else are we supposed to do?" he said. ''It's like the wild, wild west out there . . . the real problem here is that the Pakistani government does not control that part of their own country."

[Inland]

16. We rationalize the deaths so easily, it looks like terrorism to me. nt

[OneBlueSky]

17. when Iraqi civilians "don't count" because they're not Americans . . .

we have indeed sunk to the depths of those we are supposedly trying to defeat . . . what our bombs have done to innocent civilians is a war crime of the highest order, and our "leaders" must be brought to justice before the international communnity at some point . . .

[donkeyotay]

18. We can no longer blame this all on the administration. As this author

writes: "He long ago maneuvered the self-absorbed American psyche to ignore our own inhumanity."

In Gore's speech he said:

But there is yet another constitutional player whose pulse must be taken and whose role must be examined in order to understand the dangerous imbalance that has emerged with the efforts by the Executive Branch to dominate our constitutional system.

We the people are-collectively-still the key to the survival of America's democracy. We-as Lincoln put it, "ven we here"-must examine our own role as citizens in allowing and not preventing the shocking decay and degradation of our democracy.

Let us take our pulse and decide if we are too self absorbed to fight this insane capitulation to expedience and this blanket excuse that our actions are always justified by Sept. 11th.

[samhsarah]

19. So true.

So fucked up.:cry:

[Bluebear]

20. 'maneuvered the self-absorbed American psyche to ignore our own inhumanity

You said it, brother.

[cyberpj]

22. It's the standard addicts worldview. nt.

[rodeodance]

24. yes, this is the WH talking point---and I hear it from so many!

''There will be some civilian deaths. It will be nothing like what Saddam Hussein did."

[G_j]

25. K & R

[Maven]

26. Evan Bayh needs to get with the fucking program.

He couldn't wait to suck up to Trent Lott. TRENT FUCKING LOTT. Accountability anyone?

[drfresh]

27. I just put that in my AIM profile.

Hope more Americans read it.

[leftchick]

28. fly-by airstrike....

<snip>

The equivocation guarantees that it will happen again and again. The world is our wild west. When we miss the villain at high noon and the bullets fly past the saloon to kill mothers and children, we still flip the barrel to our lips, blow a triumphant puff, twirl the gun back into the holster and say, ''Darn sheriff should'a told everyone to stay inside."

McCain said, ''This war on terror has no boundaries. Clearly Al Qaeda does not respect those boundaries, but I don't want to equate our behavior with theirs."

The airstrike in Pakistan reaffirms how our behavior is plummeting in the direction of the evil we proclaim to fight. At home, we are appalled by drive-by shootings that take out innocent children. Abroad, the fly-by airstrike is the source of no remorse, with dead children and mothers taken very lightly



Too late john, you correctly equated the US with al-q. Both terrorist organizations. This is excellent.

[G_j]

30. that McCain quote

sure captures the insanity of it all,
like when Bush goes on about how the "enemy" will kill innocent people to achieve it's goals.
:shrug:

[NMMNG]

29. Of course they don't care

It's not their loved ones who are dying. It's not even "people", or men, women and children. It's terrorists, towelheads, Muslims, Islamic fanatics. The administration does all they can to avoid letting the death toll slip out to the American people, and the Bush sycophants do all they can to avoid letting themselves see the dead as human beings. For if they saw the dead as human, they would have to realize how evil they really are for supporting this dastardly war.