Doublethink (Part 4)

“The songs, the processions, the banners, the hiking, the drilling with dummy rifles, the yelling of slogans, the worship of Big Brother — it was all a sort of glorious game to them. All their ferocity was turned outwards, against the enemies of the State, against foreigners, traitors, saboteurs, thought-criminals.”   

Nineteen Eighty-Four  Part 1 Chapter 2, p. 24 by George Orwell.[1]

Remembering 9/11

On September 11th, 2010 across the US, Americans commemorated the anniversary of 9/11  with US flags, speeches, flowers floating in reflecting pools, and patriotic songs.  The President spoke at the Pentagon, and his wife, with her predecessor, spoke at Shanksville, Pa.  There was also the obligatory anti-Moslem controversy over the mosque at the World Trade Center site, and the pastor who wanted to burn the Koran.[2]

Our rulers can’t let us forget “the day America changed forever” because they use the terror of that day to justify invading two nations and seizing more power here at home by tightening the chains on American citizens.  The US government, like Orwell’s Big Brother, keeps its citizens’ “ferocity… turned outwards, against the enemies of the State, against foreigners, traitors, saboteurs, thought-criminals.”

US is in a State of National Emergency

With the remembrances of the victims comes the continual reminder of an evil that killed nearly 3,000 US civilians.  The US has been in a state of National Emergency since September 14, 2001 because of it.  President Obama quietly extended the state of National Emergency for its 10th year.  He conveniently notified Congress on September 10th, when most Americans are distracted with upcoming September 11th memorials.[3] 

If anyone even chanced to notice the quiet departure of more of our liberties amidst all the patriotic memorializing of the nearly 3,000 Americans victims, who would dare question the President?

Be Afraid

Our rulers want us to “rally round the flag” while looking outwards for foreign enemies.  They want us terrified so that we ignore, or even support, their removal of many of our freedoms  over the last nine years.  Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano marked the ninth anniversary of 9/11 in New York vowing to keep up the fight against terrorists:

“We can’t guarantee there won’t be another successful terrorist attack.  The threats we face are evolving, and enemies like Al Qaeda and its affiliates are determined. … Today, on the eve of the ninth anniversary of the worst terrorist attack in our nation’s history, I can pledge to you this: We will do everything in our power to prevent attacks and to prepare ourselves.”[4]

They need us to be afraid.  They need us to stay fearful and support wars in foreign countries:

• They need us to support the war in Afghanistan which Obama escalated to fight al Qaeda terrorism. 
• They need us to support the war as they move it to Pakistan. 
• They need us to support it as they try to move it to Iran.
• They need us to be afraid despite CIA chief Leon Panetta’s estimate that there are no more than 100 al Qaeda members in Afghanistan.[5]

Terrorism vs. Collateral Damage

Why do you think we’re repeatedly reminded of the nearly 3,000 US civilians killed on 9/11, but not that the US military killed more than 3,000 civilians in Afghanistan in the first six months of what is now a nine-year war to avenge the deaths of 9/11?[6][7]

Why is it that when Americans civilians are killed, they’re victims of terrorism and when foreign civilians are killed, they’re merely collateral damage?

Is it possible that people who lose family members to “collateral damage” might get angry enough to become “terrorists”?  Who then fathers terrorism?

12-year old Ali, an Iraqi victim of US rockets in 2003, wasn’t terrorized, just damaged collaterally.[8]

Can you see a difference between terrorism and collateral damage?  If you can, you’re on your way to understanding doublethink as well as Syme, a character in Nineteen Eighty-Four: 

“'Even the slogans will change. How could you have a slogan like “freedom is slavery” when the concept of freedom has been abolished? The whole climate of thought will be different. In fact there will be no thought, as we understand it now. Orthodoxy means not thinking — not needing to think. Orthodoxy is unconsciousness.’

“One of these days, thought Winston with sudden deep conviction, Syme will be vaporized. He is too intelligent. He sees too clearly and speaks too plainly. The Party does not like such people. One day he will disappear. It is written in his face.”

Nineteen Eighty-Four  Part 1 Chapter 5, p. 47 by George Orwell.

________________________________

[1] Nineteen Eighty-Four, by George Orwell, New American Library, N.Y., 1949, p. 24.

[2] “On Sept. 11 Anniversary, Rifts Amid Mourning,” By ANNE BARNARD and MANNY FERNANDEZ, NY Times, September 11, 2010, (Accessed at http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/12/nyregion/12sept11.html?_r=2&th=&emc=th&pagewanted=all on Sept. 24, 2010).

[3] “Letter from the President on the Continuation of the National Emergency with Respect to Certain Terrorist Attacks,” Sept. 10, 2010, (Accessed at http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2010/09/10/letter-president-continuation-national-emergency-with-respect-certain-te on Sept. 24, 2010).

September 10, 2010

Dear Madam Speaker:    (Dear Mr. President:)

Section 202(d) of the National Emergencies Act, 50 U.S.C. 1622(d), provides for the automatic termination of a national emergency unless, prior to the anniversary date of its declaration, the President publishes in the Federal Register and transmits to the Congress a notice stating that the emergency is to continue in effect beyond the anniversary date. Consistent with this provision, I have sent to the Federal Register the enclosed notice, stating that the emergency declared with respect to the terrorist attacks on the United States of September 11, 2001, is to continue in effect for an additional year.

The terrorist threat that led to the declaration on September 14, 2001, of a national emergency continues. For this reason, I have determined that it is necessary to continue in effect after September 14, 2010, the national emergency with respect to the terrorist threat.

                       Sincerely,

                       BARACK OBAMA

[4] “Janet Napolitano vows to keep up fight,” By MIKE ALLEN, 9/10/10, (Accessed at http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0910/41967.html on Sept. 24, 2010).

[5] “New Estimate of Strength of Al Qaeda Is Offered,” By DAVID E. SANGER and MARK MAZZETTI, NY Times, June 30, 2010, (Accessed at http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/01/world/asia/01qaeda.html on Sept. 25, 2010).

Apparently if 50-100 al Qaeda is an acceptable justification for escalation of the war in Afghanistan, Panetta estimated 300 al Qaeda in Pakistan to justify US drones in Pakistan.  (Shades of Cambodia and Laos in the 1970s…)

If you’re ready for triple-think:  “The Imperial Anatomy of Al-Qaeda. The CIA’s Drug-Running Terrorists and the ‘Arc of Crisis’ Part I,” by Andrew Gavin Marshall, Global Research, September 5, 2010, (Accessed at http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle&code=MAR20100905&articleId=20907 on Sept. 24, 2010).

[6] “Tighter Rules Fail to Stem Deaths of Innocent Afghans at Checkpoints,” By RICHARD A. OPPEL Jr., NY Times, March 26, 2010, (Accessed at http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/27/world/asia/27afghan.html?_r=1 on September 21, 2010).

[7] “US forces 'kill 8 children' in night raid on village in Afghanistan,” Scotsman, 31 December 2009, By JEROME STARKEY in KABUL, (Accessed at http://news.scotsman.com/world/US-forces-kill-8-children.5947753.jp on Sept. 21, 2010).

[8] “Blood Brothers,” By TOM NEWTON DUNN, The Sun, 03 Apr 2010, (Accessed at http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/campaigns/our_boys/2919198/Victims-of-Iraq-war-meet-amputee-British-soldiers.html on Sept. 30, 2010).

Then twelve year old Ali, is now 19 and adjusted to his life without arms.  His doctor thought he would die within weeks after the rocket attack that killed most of his family (his aunt survived).  I’ve quoted liberally from the article in the New Yorker as I’m sure it will be instructive in distinguishing the vast difference between victims of terrorism and those who are merely “collateral damage”:

“Dr. Saleh stopped to talk briefly with three European doctors from Médecins Sans Frontières, the nongovernmental organization that had been in Iraq for several weeks, assisting Iraqi doctors.

“One of Dr. Saleh’s assistants, a young woman, had pulled some images up on a computer screen in his office. Dr. Saleh invited me to look at them with him. The first image the assistant showed us was of a boy lying naked in the emergency operating theatre. A catheter and tube was attached to his penis. The child’s legs were smooth, but his entire torso was black, and his arms were horribly burned. At about the biceps, the flesh of both arms became charred, black grotesqueries. One of his hands was a twisted, melted claw. His other arm had apparently been burned off at the elbow, and two long bones were sticking out of it. It looked like something that might be found in a barbecue pit.

“The child’s face was covered by an anesthesia mask. ‘This is Ali,’ Dr. Saleh said. ‘He is twelve. He was wounded in a rocket attack the night before last in the southeastern part of Baghdad, about fifteen minutes from here. Ali lost his mother, his father, and his six brothers and sisters. Four homes were destroyed; in one of them, the whole family was killed, eight people.’

“It was hard to imagine that the person in the photograph could be alive, but Dr. Saleh said that Ali was still conscious. ‘I don’t think he will survive, though,’ he said in a flat tone. ‘These burned people have complications after three or four days; in the first week they usually get septicemia.’ His assistant was pulling up new images on her monitor. They showed Ali again, on the same bed and in the same position as before, but this time without his charred appendages. Both arms had been amputated, and the stumps were wrapped in white bandages. His torso was covered in some kind of clear grease. The mask had been removed from his face, and he appeared to be sleeping. He had a beautiful head, with the feminine features of a prepubescent boy. In another picture, Ali was awake, staring at the camera with large, expressionless eyes.

“Dr. Saleh’s assistant breathed in sharply and put one hand over her mouth. Then she brought up some images of Ali’s family just after the bodies had arrived at the hospital’s morgue. It was difficult to make out what had once been human beings. Cloth stuck to the bodies, bits of bold red-and-green fabric with flower designs. There seemed to be some straw mixed in, and I asked Dr. Saleh if they had been farming people. He said yes, and pointed out Ali’s mother. Her face had been cut in half, as if by a giant cleaver, and her mouth was yawning open. In other pictures, which Dr. Saleh said were of Ali’s father and a younger sister, all I could see was a macabre collection of charred body parts and some red flesh. The body of his brother was all there, it seemed, but from the nose up his head was gone, simply sheared off, like the head of a rubber doll. His mouth, like that of his mother, was open, as if he were screaming.

“‘Have you seen enough?’ the assistant asked me quietly. I didn’t say anything, so she showed me more pictures. After a few minutes of this, Dr. Saleh said, ‘O.K. This is just part of the tragedy.’ He asked me if I wanted to see Ali.

“I followed Dr. Saleh to the burn unit, where some men helped us on with green smocks, face masks, gauzy hair nets, and shoe coverings. Then we walked down a bare and quiet hall that reminded me of a prison corridor. The only thing on the walls was a framed portrait of Saddam Hussein. Dr. Saleh opened a door and we went into a small room where an older woman in a black abaya, Ali’s aunt, was sitting in a chair. A tiny window in the far wall of the room let in some sunlight. The aunt was sitting next to a bed on wheels that had a hooplike structure over it. Dr. Saleh carefully pulled back a coarse gray blanket, and I saw Ali’s naked chest, his bandaged stumps, and his face. His large eyes were hazel, flecked with green. He had long eyelashes and wavy brown hair. I didn’t know what to say.

“Dr. Saleh asked Ali how he felt. ‘O.K.,’ he said. Wasn’t he in a lot of pain, I said to Dr. Saleh, in a whisper. I spoke in English. ‘No,’ he replied. ‘Deeply burned patients don’t feel much pain because of the damage to their nerves.’ I stared at Ali, who looked back at me and at Dr. Saleh. His aunt got up and stood behind the head of the bed. She said nothing.

“I asked Dr. Saleh to ask Ali what he was thinking about. Ali spoke for a moment in Arabic, in a boy’s soft, high-pitched voice. ‘He doesn’t think of anything, and he doesn’t remember anything,’ Dr. Saleh said. He explained that Ali did not know that his family was dead. I asked Ali about school. He was in the sixth grade, he said, and his favorite subject was geography. As he spoke, his aunt stroked his hair. Did he like sports? Yes, he replied, especially volleyball, and also soccer…

“…Dr. Saleh rubbed his eyes and cleared his throat several times. We went back to his office, and he washed his face in a sink. ‘So it’s untrue what they say about doctors being able to suspend their emotions,’ I said.

“He looked at me. His eyes were pink. ‘We are human beings,’ he replied. He explained that Ali knew that he had lost his arms, but that he had not acknowledged it yet: ‘He is conscious. He can see the stumps.’ Ali would likely die within three weeks.”[9]

[9] “Letter from Baghdad, War Wounds; Bombs fall and the lights go out” by Jon Lee Anderson, New Yorker, April 14, 2003, (Accessed at http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2003/04/14/030414fa_fact1?currentPage=all on Oct 1, 2010).