Film Review: WHAT I WANT YOU TO KNOW

Last night I attended a screening of the veterans' documentary WHAT I WANT YOU TO KNOW. After garnering the audience favorite award at last summer's Maine International Film Festival the film attracted sponsors including peace organizations I belong to that worked to bring the film to more audiences here in Maine. Attendance at the November 13 screening in Brunswick was sparse -- about 20 people -- but an engaging discussion after the film was facilitated by veterans' counselor Robyn Belcher.

Archival footage of the wars the U.S. waged in Afghanistan and Iraq following 9/11 was interspersed with contemporary interviews of multiple veterans of those wars. Organized loosely by chronology of the enlistees' journeys from private citizens to imperial cannon fodder, the narrative arrived at moral injury -- a final resting place where one veteran predicted he will still be dwelling decades from now.

The film's theme is futility and the sensation that all the limbs and lives lost, plus the civilians terrorized or slaughtered, was for nothing. Several clips of a succession of U.S. presidents speaking conveyed the lies that combat veterans now believe they were told in the course of their enlistment. 

This photo and the one at the top are stills from the film's website.

There was no clear mission and, once in country, soldiers literally drove around in circles waiting for their turn to be blasted by an IED. They arrested the wrong men, they shot blindly into crowds of civilians, and in their view absolutely nothing was gained.

Ostensible reasons for being there i.e. bringing "democracy" or advancing the rights of women were quickly exposed as fraudulent. Insurgents had the support and loyalty of the people, and woe betide those who threw in with the occupying forces as interpreters only to be cast aside as the U.S. military departed. These acts of disloyalty contributed to the moral suffering described by veterans, and to the moral decay in evidence as soldiers whoop and congratulate themselves on shooting down from helicopters onto unarmed civilians.

U.S. soldier Steven Green hung himself in prison after being among a group of soldiers convicted of rape and murder committed in Mahmoudiyah, Iraq in 2006.  Photograph: AP

The film has a tight focus but I thought there were some glaring omissions in the moral injury department. No discussion of rape except in the context of Afghan warlords and their exploitation of boys? Really? Who can forget the gang-rape and murder of 14 year old Abeer Qassim Hamza al-Janabi by U.S. Army soldiers who then killed her entire family in order to eliminate the witnesses. 

And why was there no discussion of opium production in Afghanistan used to fund the war while driving an opioid epidemic in the West until the Taliban again eradicated it after the occupiers departed? Plenty of veterans have died of suicide by overdose in the intervening years.

Suicide was touched on as it's well known that more active duty soldiers die in "accidents" or by their own hand than die from enemy fire. Soldiers described feeling betrayed by their leaders and demoralized by the things they both saw and did while deployed, a potent combination that eroded their will to stay alive.

Most of the audience discussion focused on damaged vets and how to help them help themselves. I have to admit that was not my focus as an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure in situations like this. Why not celebrate the fact that largely because of their suffering the will to enlist in the U.S. military is at an all time low? Even military families, traditionally the best source of volunteers, are telling their younger generations not to enlist. Decades of war for profit with dishonor have gutted what was once a proud military that believed in its mission (however deluded that notion might have been). 

The U.S. imperial mission in Ukraine and now in Israel have been spectacular failures that the government and its obedient press are still lying about today. Those in the know understand that Ukraine could not beat or even weaken Russia, and that Israel cannot win against Hamas, Hezbollah, and Resistance coalitions coming together to fight them and their U.S. sponsor. Attacks on illegal U.S. military bases in Syria and Iraq are reported almost daily. Meanwhile hundreds of thousands in the U.S. and millions across the globe continue marching to demand an end to the genocide happening right now to Palestinians.

Palestinians flee to the southern Gaza Strip on Salah al-Din Street in Bureij, Gaza Strip, Friday, Nov. 10, 2023. (AP Photo/Fatima Shbair)

The long downfall in morale that began with the Vietnam War has proven far more enduring than freedom.

9/11 Is But One Piece Of The Puzzle

A visual comparison of deaths at the World Trade Center and deaths from the pandemic caused by the COVID-19 virus and its variants.

Unlike today's students being preyed upon by military recruiters counting on manufactured patriotism -- patriotism on steroids since the unfortunate events of 9/11 -- I was there. No, not in NYC, or Washington DC, or even in Maine where one of the alleged masterminds of the alleged takedown of the twin towers in lower Manhattan boarded his first plane.

I was in California, on my way to work, with a preteen child in the car -- one whose sense of security was demolished on Sep. 11, 2001.

A few years later I was back in Maine trying to count the flags that had sprung up everywhere (too many to count in a car traveling 45 mph).

Some things are best understood in retrospect.

That nearly 3,000 "Americans" (27 were actually foreign nationals) died in the World Trade Center was a fact repeated as often as the videos of both towers collapsing. Oh, and WTC Building 7 which collapsed 8 hours later. This magnitude of death was the pretext for going to war on Afghanistan which allegedly harbored the Saudi masterminds of the terrorist attack. Except it was Pakistan doing the harboring. But they have nuclear weapons, don't they?

The main things that 9/11 provided were an enormous spectacle to justify the endlessly profitable wars of imperial expansion for the U.S., sometimes doing business as NATO.  (If you wonder what NATO is doing in Australia since that's about as far from North Atlantic as you can get, maybe read blogger Caitlin Johnstone.)

The other signficant thing that 9/11 provided cover for was the 300 page so-called Patriot Act which gutted constitutional rights of citizens and terrorists alike. Swiftly gutted them, and created the Department of Homeland Security and created ICE -- both of which we had gotten along without prior to 9/11.

A lot of torture happened after 9/11. No, not the torture of being an Afghan or Pakistani child trying to sleep while surveillance robots droned overhead 24/7 waiting to unleash their Hellfire missiles on your home. Torture in secret prisons and in the gulag known as Guantánamo which is on Cuba's territory without their consent.

Torture that resulted in persecution of torture whistleblowers. 

Torture of Chelsea Manning for refusing to reveal how she shared evidence of U.S. war crimes. 

Torture of Julian Assange for sharing evidence of U.S. and allied forces' war crimes and dirty financial dealings. 

Almost torture of Edward Snowden for revealing the spying that digital technology and security state overreach have made ubiquitous. He lives in exile in Moscow now, with his young family, still trying to warn us about how to protect ourselves from the "security" state.

9/11 was used to justify war on Iraq via lies that Saddam Hussein had something to do with it. 

Source: Brown University, Watson Institute, Costs of War Project

9/11 was used to drive fossil fuel consumption and thus climate crisis.

9/11 was used to justify war on people in Syria. And Yemen. And Somalia. 

9/11 was used to consolidate U.S. government support of Israel's human rights violations and war crimes against Palestinians.

Source: The Daily Times "Eagleton fifth-graders study 9/11" Sep. 10, 2016 

9/11 was used to produce a lot of canned curriculum that teachers are told they must use to inform kids that are not upset about 9/11. 

Becuase they were not even born when it happened.

And really, how much should they care about 9/11? Their young lives have been upended by a public health disaster of far greater proportions, still rampaging out of control. This time the heroes they're encouraged to worship aren't in firefighter or military uniforms, they're in scrubs and PPE.

What will this much larger disaster be used for?

We're Still Bombing Afghans = The War Is Not Over

Imagine for a moment that you're a person who loves a little child who was killed by aerial bombing, burnt to a crisp, by the U.S. military. It could be 1945, 1950, 1969, 1995, or pretty much any year in the 21st century.

"Malika Ahmadi, two, died in a U.S. drone strike on Kabul today, her family says. Has the war of 20 years cost us the ability to care?" Source: David Swanson, Pressenza

Now imagine that it just happened yesterday. And that the U.S. corporate press is proclaiming that the war they've been waging for decades on your country is "over."

That the U.S. corporate press lies for a living -- right out in the open -- makes no difference to you in your grief.

It mostly makes a difference to the taxpayers and voters of the country thousands of miles away where citizen are sold horseshit like, "We've got to fight terrorists over there so we don't have to fight them over here."

The lies that sell wars and buy elected officials use bogus concepts and slogans like "The war on terror" to incite fear and make compliance much easier than opposition.

A few people will go on social media platforms that are heavily censored in favor of corporate rule to express the truth laced with dark humor.

Well I think we can probably call it now and say that Terror has won the War on Terror.

— LouJo 🇬🇧 (@LouJoSays) August 29, 2021

https://twitter.com/LouJoSays/status/1432056340101439495

The U.S. has bombed little children to death under alternating Democratic and Republican administrations my entire life. 

It began bombing Afghan children following the unfortunate events of 9/11 in 2001 after a speech by then President George W. Bush proclaimed that "their harbors" would no longer be safe. (Note: Afghanistan is a land-locked country with no harbors.)

The current Democratic administration has announced that it will continue using flying killer robots to bomb Afghanistan for the foreseeable future. (It's also drone bombing Somalia, and plenty of other places, at will.) 

“Enough is enough,” Edward Ahmed Mitchell, national deputy director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), said in a statement. “For more than ten years, our government’s drone strikes have killed thousands of innocent people in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Yemen, and elsewhere in the Muslim world—destroying family homes, wedding parties, and even funeral processions. The civilian casualties in Kabul are simply the latest victims of this misused technology.”

Source: https://scheerpost.com/2021/08/30/demand-for-moratorium-on-drone-warfare-follows-latest-u-s-killing-of-afghan-civilians

Besides the warped views about war sold constantly over corporate airwaves, why is there a steady supply of men and women willing to remotely bomb children in Afghanistan?

Because after young people turned against the military draft for the war on Vietnam, U.S. corporate interests have made damn sure that the poverty draft continues blowing a steady gale force.

With no money for college and no money for dental care and no money for rent, food, and car expenses many young people in the U.S. feel they have no choice but to enlist. The poorer the state -- like my home, Maine -- the harder the poverty draft blows.

But some folks prospered during the 20 year war that's still not over.

(Feel like finding out how much war profiteers donated to the campaign coffers of your elected officials that refuse to actually end the war on terror? You can look it up here on OpenSecrets.org).

Fascism Is No Longer Creeping, It's Galloping Now 17 Years After 9/11

I'm supposed to be blogging about 9/11 today, justifying the endlessly profitable "war on terror." But I think I'll blog about the uses that have been made of those events instead.

Fascism is no longer creeping, it's galloping now was my husband's response to news that my posts of the Peace Hub video from Saturday's climate march had been removed by Facebook. Allegedly it "looked like spam" or perhaps "violated community standards" so my account was locked temporarily also.

Here are their messages and then the actual video so you can judge for yourself why spybook didn't like my posts:

Here is the offending video:



Link in case the video does not play here on Blogger or in your email feed: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mktdshvHN5c&feature=youtu.be

In possibly unrelated news, we found recently that the soup kitchen in the town where we hold our weekly peace vigil had closed. Word on the street is that the place where Skowhegan's large homeless population could count on getting a hot meal was closed down because suddenly the volunteers were required to prove they had background checks, and they didn't.

This was our response on the bridge. (If you're wondering, yes, I do have a background check because I was forced to get fingerprinted in order to keep my job as a public school teacher after 9/11.)

We'll be there again on Sundays, noon - 1pm. Spread the word.

Wars Rage On As Circus Show Of National Politics Distracts The Masses

Rev. Chris Antal and a quilt commemorating the victims of U.S. drone attacks.
Image source: DronesQuiltProject.com

Not sure how I missed this back in June: a concise, searing indictment of the Obama administration as it "continues to claim the right to kill anyone, anywhere on earth, at any time, for secret reasons." It was delivered by Unitarian minister and Army Reserve officer Christopher Antal as he resigned his post. Saying "I refuse to serve as an empire chaplain" he outlined the reasons why his role in the military could no longer be reconciled with his Christian beliefs.

What is this "permanent military supremacy and global power projection" so celebrated at the recent Democratic Party convention? Most in the U.S. would be hard pressed to describe it beyond a vague notion that we are at war with terror, and ISIS is its latest face. 

Today I offer an overview of the many, many wars the U.S. is engaged in while attention focuses on the circus of electing the next actor who will explain to us what our corporate overlords have decided to do.

Aftermath of U.S. bombing of Sabratha, Libya.
Image source: d.ibtimes.co.uk

Libya
We're bombing Libya this week, the nation whose leader was toppled in an event described gleefully by a corporate party candidate as, "We came, we saw, he died." Now widely considered a failed state with no effective national government five years on, some also consider it the launching pad for AFRICOM's projection of force over that rich continent. The president explained to reporters that we are bombing Libya to "finish the job" of driving out terrorists. This despite the fact that bombing civilians very often leads to the young men of a targeted area signing up to resist U.S. aggression.

Analysts, including those embedded in the U.S. power structure itself, often remind us that "There is no military solution in ____." But the Pentagon and Wall St. aren't looking for solutions, just profits.

Image source: SyrianRefugees.eu

Syria
The bloodbath and refugee crisis of staggering proportions continue, with U.S. officials ordering air strikes and sending in troops while demagogues denounce the refugees as dangerous in order refuse them entry. Even the president acknowledges that "there is no military solution in Syria" but the Pentagon keeps bombing Syria anyway. Invading Syria was part of the neocon game plan back in 2003 when the U.S. invaded neighboring Iraq; things didn't go as swiftly as the Pentagon had planned, and it has taken more than a decade to ramp up the destabilizing violence in this key petroleum corridor.

Image source: pbs.org "Marines say latest fight for Fallujah reignites anguish over Iraq War"

Iraq
The president has announced several times that he ended combat in this inherited warfront, adding to the pile of lies he was hired to tell. There seem to be around 5,000 troops there currently. This summer saw the third big battle to control the key city of Fallujah, a military action ironically code named "Operation Breaking Terrorism." A U.S. soldier who died in Iraq in 2004 became an unwitting political football in the election circus as his parents allowed themselves to be used by one of the corporate parties earning the disdain of the demagogue with the bad hair, ostensible candidate for the other corporate party.

Image source: Global Research
"Troops are protecting Afghan opium as U.S. occupation leads to all time high heroin production"

Afghanistan
Who weeps for Afghanistan, the country targeted after the inside job of 9/11 ushered in the endless war on terror? After 14 years of U.S. led war, conditions are as bad for Afghans as they have ever been: Kabul's infrastructure is in ruins and the Taliban continue to regain control of key areas. Drones rain down bombs on civilians while U.S. casualties continue. Perhaps if people in the U.S. better understood the connection between U.S. support for the warlords who fund their operations via opium production and the heroin crisis here at home they would insist that the U.S. military leave Afghanistan.

Image source: Voice of America 
"Pakistani local residents gather around a burning vehicle hit by a U.S. drone strike, May 21, 2016. 
Afghan Taliban Mullah Akhtar Mansoor was the target of the drone near Dalbandin, Baluchistan, Pakistan."

Pakistan
Supposedly a U.S. ally, Pakistan's government cannot stop the CIA and/or Pentagon from drone bombing their border areas with Afghanistan. 

Image source: CNN.com

Somalia
Last year Western journalists in Somalia reported that being on the receiving end of U.S. drone strikes was considered an honor by terrorist group Al Shabaab. Not so much by the civilians who die in the bombings. 

Could most in the U.S. find Somalia on a map? Doubtful.

Image source: todayonline.com
 "A man and a boy walk at a site hit by a Saudi-led air strike in Yemen's capital. Photo: Reuters"

Yemen
"Obama disastrously backed Saudi Arabia in Yemen, now he's deploying U.S. troops to deal with the fallout: the U.S. says it is fighting the same Al Qaeda affiliates that are allied with elements of the coalition America is backing" by Sarah Lazare on May 12 pretty much says it all. These are not wars that are meant to be won. Here's her full article on Alternet.

I grow weary, as I suspect you do, too, if you've continued reading to this point. Perhaps tomorrow I will continue my inventory of U.S. military presence in far flung spots around the planet. Next up: South Korea, Ukraine, Okinawa, Lithuania, Poland, etc.

Just because it's invisible to most in the U.S. doesn't mean WWIII isn't rolling onward to oblivion. When the blowback reaches our shores, a hard rain is gonna fall.

Islamophobia Is The Predictable Response To More Terror, And Who Benefits From That?

All the predictable things happened after Friday the 13th's acts of terror and violence. France declared a state of emergency, closed its borders, and imposed a curfew. A refugee camp called the Jungle in Calais was set ablaze. 

Vast numbers in the U.S. and Europe "stood with Paris" by changing the color scheme of their avatar or profile picture. Small numbers in the U.S. and Europe wondered why those same folks didn't stand with Beirut, Baghdad or Garissa University in Kenya.

Source: Shafiur Rahman, YouTube video of the Calais "Jungle" refugee camp burning

Politicians in the U.S. jumped on the occasion to denounce Islam -- some demanded apologies from Muslims -- and vilify immigrants, notably refugees who are fleeing from the very violence being denounced. Maine's infamously thuggish governor joined other governors from a Republican Party increasingly defined by overt racism to announce that his state would not accept refugees from Syria. 

No one in my state was surprised that the governor would not know the difference between Algeria and Syria (or be able to find either on an unlabeled map, I suspect). That governors do not have this power wouldn't trouble him in the least. His compatriots in the U.S. Congress were already busy drafting legislation to say the same. 

That would be legal. Immoral and wrong, but legal. So was everything the Nazis did in Germany once they had gained control of the executive and legislative branches of government in that republic.

Besides, the U.S. has a long history of denying entry to persecuted people who aren't the right color or religion.

Jewish refugees on the infamous S.S.St. Louis were denied entry to the U.S. and turned back to Europe in 1939.
Many died in Nazi concentration camps as a result.

Media pundits and others on the right called for more violence to quell the violence. Because the "war on terror" has been such a success in reducing terror. Not. Nor was it because most were aware that Syria was on the list of regimes to topple even before the staged events of 9/11 in the U.S.

Hate crimes against Muslims broke out all over the U.S. Mosques were vandalized. Muslims in France became even more afraid than they have been since the Charlie Hebdo massacre.

Source:  [Santi Palacios/AP]

Over 4 million refugees from the war in Syria continued searching for a safe place to bring their children.

And, as reported by Glenn Greenwald in The Intercept, "Stock Prices Of Weapons Manufacturers Soaring Since Paris Attack." 

Who profits from violence that feeds violence? I think we know.