And yet more History

Compiled from a 5-minute tour around the internet on historians' views. Except for a couple of small editions, none of the following is mine but direct quotations. You can read the whole article in: <a href="http://www.nonviolence.org/comment/archives/138.php">




Please abandon the conceit that "our" killings are always "war," while "their" killings are always terrorism. Jettison, too, its corollary, that "our" deaths are an affront to humanity, while "theirs" are simply unfortunate accidents.

These conceits distill American exceptionalism--the widespread belief that we are better than others, and that America is not subject to customary international rules--to its bitter, racist essence. For some recent book-length treatments of American exceptionalism, see Siobhan McEvoy-Levy, _American Exceptionalism and US Foreign Policy: Public Diplomacy at the End of the Cold War_, Palgrave Global Publishing, 2001; and Deborah L. Madsen, _American Exceptionalism_, University Press of Mississippi, 1998.

We are all God's children--Americans and Iraqis, Palestinians and Jews--created in God's image, of infinite worth. Realize the limitless hypocrisy of the position: The one nation that has killed with nuclear weapons intends to devastate an already-impoverished country because it might, someday in the future, do something harmful. If the US may assault another nation because of what it might do in the future, so may every other country attack its potential enemies.

Bush says Saddam Hussein must be removed because he used poison gas on Iraqi Kurds in 1988. But Hussein was an American friend at the time, and he acquired much of his technology from us.

"Since Baghdad's deployment of chemical arms in war as well as peace was known at the time [1988], the question is: What did the US government do about it then? Nothing. Worse, so strong was the hold of the pro-Iraq lobby on the Republican administration of President Ronald Reagan, it succeeded in getting the White House to frustrate the Senate's attempt to penalize Baghdad for violating the Geneva Protocol on Chemical Weapons, which it had signed." Dilip Hiro, "Iraq and Poison Gas," The Nation, August 28, 2002. Online at http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20020902&s=hiro20020828.

For a discussion of the U.S. role in the Iraq-Iran war of 1980-1988, see Stephen Shalom, "The United States and the Iran-Iraq War" ("The United States provided intelligence information, bogus and real, to both sides, provided arms to one side, funded paramilitary exile groups, sought military bases, and sent in the US Navy--and all the while Iranians and Iraqis died."). Online at http://www.zmag.org/zmag/articles/ShalomIranIraq.html.

Bush says Hussein must go because he invaded Kuwait. But then-U.S. ambassador to Iraq April Glaspie met with Hussein eight days before the invasion and reportedly told Iraq we would not interfere. A transcript of that meeting later surfaced and was published in the New York Times. See http://www.chss.montclair.edu/english/furr/glaspie.html. Glaspie admitted the meeting but claimed that the document was a "deliberate deception on a major scale," although she acknowledged that the transcript contained "a great deal" that was accurate. See http://www.csmonitor.com/durable/1999/05/27/p23s3.htm.