So a guy gets on a plane and tries to set his underwear on fire. Pretty scary, eh? Maybe 300 people would have died, but that’s child’s play for us. America pilots make that many corpses and text message at the same time. But the reaction is interesting, a stark contrast between self-image and reality.
Here’s how people in other countries see us:
Run your lives! Here’s a famous image – U.S. fighter jets hit a South Vietnamese village, and the resulting picture captured for all posterity the terror that we inflicted on others that day.
I don’t have to remind anyone that the reason the little girl is naked is because of napalm -it makes people tear off their clothing. When Dow first invented it, people were able to jump into lakes and rivers to get it off them. So the Dow boys came up with a new formula that adhered to the skin even after immersed in water. Good old American ingenuity.
That’s not how we see ourselves, of course.
Soldiers that return from our foreign adventures often tell tales of horror – that’s a lot of why the Vietnam war became so unpopular – returning soldiers. I would imagine that the military is pretty tight about that stuff these days – they do control the images we see. The picture of the little Vietnamese girl above would never be seen today- not in a newspaper or magazine, and certainly not TV. That was one of the lessons of the Vietnam War, first applied in Gulf War I – control what we see, control what we think. Here we are fighting two brutal wars with thousands upon thousands of civilian deaths, and people are hardly aware of it.
Images have power. Remember Abu Ghraib?
Pretty gruesome, but here is something important to realize about thought control in a society like ours: if it ain’t in pictures, it ain’t in people’s minds. Abu Ghraib, so far as I can tell, is the only imagery that has harmed the valiant war efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan, Colombia, Yemen, and Pakistan. And Iran. Sudan … I lose track. When we are not actually fighting these wars, we are supplying the weapons.
Remember when the Israelis attacked Gaza a couple of years ago?
American bombs. The little girl is known as “collateral damage”.
Now forget for a minute about the dead kid. It’s the building behind … that is what is known as a “military target”, sometimes called a “terrorist hideout”. Usually when they blow up a building like that, they have a real target in mind. In this case, it was the little boy. He is what they call an “Al Qaeda operative”, possibly “second in command.”
This is more like it:
Yeah baby! These colors don’t run.
What’s that? A bomb on a plane? Good God -Obama, do something! Now we’re afraid to fly again! Xray underpants, keep anyone with dark skins off our planes!
Guess we ain’t so tough after all.
Piece of Mindful 
The biggest threat to American Imperialism occurs when Americans become tuned into the vision of what the rest of the world sees of the USA actions.
Therefore, the US media refuses to offer that view.
But the internet and its internationalism, and other avenues such as this blog, is side-stepping the gate keepers.
This ‘democratization’ of information will set ablaze the world as did the printing press for Luther and his complaints against the Church.
Let’s hope, though, that the outcome is different.
Luther’s information explosion set the fuse for what now is known as the 30 Years War – the most destructive and fatal European war in history up until WW1.
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You posted as the work was in progress.
We intercept words and process them and apply critical thought to them, hopefully, but images go straight to the brain, unedited.
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Mark,
You are among those that caused this, thus you share the blame for its existence.
http://freedomfliesblackflag.wordpress.com/
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MR Tokarski,
It’s truly a shame that you have so much to say yet you still come off as an ignorant, unpatriotic, and egotistical moron that clearly has no concept on the Government, the Military, or world views as a whole. Next time you decide to spread your vile filth and trash these things I suggest you remember that those “Colors” you are mocking are the same ones people like me defend so that A-holes like you can say what you want.
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No Vietnamese ever threatened me, nor any Korean, Indonesian, Palestinian, Iraqi, Afghan, Serbian or Colombian. None.
What on earth are you talking about? If someone threatens us somehow, I’ll be right beside you. So far as I can see, however, you are clueless.
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Actually Bosnian Serbs (in particular General Mladic) publicily threatened terrorist attacks in the western cities during the early 1990s, including 1992 threats to attack nuclear plants in the USA and the 1993 threat to “bomb London”.
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John,
Explain why “Patriots” need to support their governments purposeful killing of innocent children?
Is all government action – by your position – rightful no matter what that action is?
How do you decide it is or it isn’t? What is your measuring stick?
Have you ever considered that you are the primary definition of the “Banality of Evil”?
– that evil, so common place while under the command of government, becomes accepted by otherwise normal and moral men because it is so common.
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Aha! You have read Hannah Arendt. One whom I admire deeply.
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Indeed.
I believe she was quite correct in the understanding how such great evil can pass over a respected, culturally advanced, and knowledge people.
We suffer the same. Every generation has a small bit of their freedom destroyed.
The new born generation has experienced nothing but it, the old die off. A new, but small, loss is suffered again – “not a big deal, it could be worse” is the mantra – and a new born generation experiences nothing but it, the old die and so on….
….200 years later or so, you have tyranny so deep that people do not even understand the word freedom any more and believe it is their patriotic duty to kill kids.
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Collateral damage, that’s all it is. The world is not some global society as you see it. we are all segregated. go to japan and you will find japaneese people. Go to Fance and you will find French people. and these wars and bombings are genocide. It’s natural. Terrorism, or Peace keeping are just excuses for it. it’s been this way for over 30000 years and nothing is going to change. ever.
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Peace Peace and Peace…..
Many times Americans use these words. but we all know these are not having any meaning for them. Only USA is responsible for Islamic Terrorism, what you will say after seeing Abu Graib torture pictures. we, the Muslims will look for peace.
The 3rd law of Newton is “there is equal and oposite reaction for every action, and the action is the cause and the reaction is result.”
So don’t engage yourself in useless activities, try to look for Peace.
not a single muslim in this world want to fight, but the situations presure them.
I think 20 hours out of 24, about peace.
being a muslim its my duty to be on peace.
peace of Allah, be on all humanity…..
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لماذا كل هذا ?? هل لاننا مسلمون
ربنا يهديكو
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would fuck that little girl side ways arrrrre ye bald pus
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It was not “US fighter”, it was a South Vietnamese one.
Israelis don’t claim they’re fighting with al-Qaeda. Well, not primarily. Al-Qaeda organisation in Gaza (Army of Islam) is rather small.
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