Spring Break
Abstract:
The American playwright Lillian Hellman titled her memoir of the McCarthy years Scoundrel Time. A memoir of this period in American history might well be called Gestapo Time.
It is now more than a year since the revelations of torture and homicide against prisoners at Abu Ghraib, the showpiece of our efforts to "democratize" Iraq, shocked and outraged the world....
jad62
posted 6/24/05 @ 4:34 PM EST
It is insulting to the students who pay good money to attend Drexel University to have Robert Zaller teaching history -- he should instead teach revisionist history -- but that's probably how his lectures wind up anyway. Drexel students, you are the clients and professors at this university are your service providers. You are paying their salaries. Don't be afraid to challenge them on their anti-American propaganda and if you are discriminated against, complain to the dean or visit studentsforacademicfreedom.org.
On to Zaller's article. First of all, the Geneva Convention does not apply to terrorists incarcerated at Guantanemo prison. The Geneva Convention applies to soldiers fighting on behalf of a soverign nation. Al Qaeda, Hamas, Hezbollah and other savages do not qualify as "soverign nations." These are illegal terrorist groups and folks they are more than willing to kill 3,000 more of us just like they did on 9/11. To "shut it down, just shut it down" as the NYTimes says would be giving a green light for another 9/11.
Zaller begins his rant with the claim that "revalations of 'torture' and 'homocide'... showpiece of our efforts to 'democratize' Iraq." That is a lie and an insult to our troops and the Iraqi people. The showpiece of our success at democratizing Iraq were the free elections that happened against all odds. The whole "torture" thing isn't even torture anyway; that was a NYTimes and moveon.org lie fueled by the likes of... well, people who think like Robert Zaller. Humiliation by a few rogue troops was what Abu Graib was. Taking naked photos, putting a hood on someone's head, scaring them with a dog and waterboarding hardly qualifies as torture. Ask any Iraqi parent who was forced to watch their children's eyes pulled out by Saddam's secret police what torture is. Ask any Iraqi Kurd or Madan what it's like to live in pain every day because the chemical burns you suffered from Saddam's gas attacks didn't kill you right away. Ask any Iraqi mother who had to dig through dozens of rotting corpses in Saddam's mass graves just to find her child to compare a barking dog with what she's going through. Ask any Holocaust survivor to compare their ordeal with a few terrorists who were photographed naked. How dare Zaller and Amnesty International compare Abu Graib and Guantantmo to a concentration camp!
The war against Iraq was no more a violation of "international law" then our involvement in WW2 was. Adolph Hitler was no imminent threat to the US but he was a mass murderer who had to be stopped. To not have done so would have been to say the (real) concentration camps at Auschwitz and Dachau were the "problems of a soverign nation." No way! WW2 was justified, the Balkans war was justified, the Afghan war was justified and the discovery of all those mass graves (not reported in the NYTimes) proves that the Iraq war was justified. The US does not have to bow down to the UN and must never do so. The UN is responsible for much of the suffering throughout the world. They did nothing in Rwanda, Sudan, Iraq, the Balkans, Cambodia, etc. The UN sat by and created the oil for food scandal that denied Iraqis food and medicine while Saddam got rich. The UN sponsored a conference on international racism then turned it into a hategroup meeting against Israel. But the UN did take the time to put Sudan, Zimbabwae and Iran on a UN human-rights commission. There is no "international law" except in the eyes of those who are too blind to see what the UN is really all about.
Any professor of history should know that in the US, presidents are elected by an electoral college... that's how it's been for quite some time. Bush was elected president in 2000 because he won the electoral college -- just like when Clinton became president by losing the popular vote but winning the electroral college.
According to the US Constitution, treason is defined as giving aid and comfort to the enemy. Articles from Americans such as Zaller put our troops in danger and give encouragement to our enemies. Look at how Senator Durbin's "gulag" comments were covered endlessly on Al Jazeera -- the CNN of Islamafascsist terrorism. America has not "deserted itself" as Zaller claims but he sure has deserted America.