S. Brian Willson

Time 2020-11-18 23:06:23

Web Name: S. Brian Willson

WebSite: http://www.brianwillson.com

ID:120434

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Brian,Willson,

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This site contains essays describing the incredible historic pattern of U.S. arrogance, ethnocentrism, violence and lawlessness in domestic and global affairs, and the severe danger this pattern poses for the future health of Homo sapiens and Mother Earth. Other essays discuss revolutionary, nonviolent alternative approaches based on the principle of radical relational mutuality. This is a term increasingly used by physicists, mathematicians and cosmologists to describe the nature of the omnicentric*, ever-unfolding universe. Every being, every aspect of life energy in the cosmos, is intrinsically interconnected with and affects every other being and aspect of life energy at every moment. *everything is at the center of the cosmos at every moment All blog entries and essays posted on this site are authored by S. Brian Willson. Whose Blood, Whose Hands? January 6, 2020 12:32 pm “Qasem Soleimanihad the blood of Americans on his hands”, so said US Representative EliotEngel, Chair of the House Committee on Foreign Relations. A similar accusationwas made by many other politicians and commentators. But these blood-drenchedpoliticians and commentators only know what the extremely biased anti-Russianand anti-Iranian US intelligence reports say which are predictably unreliable. Theyhave no idea of Soleimani’s history who many observers credit with being thechief strategist in defeating ISIS. And the most important question of all isignored – why are unwanted US military present in other countries? They arethere illegally, a blatantly imperial menace. Why is Congress funding thispolicy that in fact threatens the people of the US, rather than protectingthem?Of course, thesemostly White men hypocritically ignore gruesome history, including militarilysupporting Iraq’s Saddam Hussein with chemical weapons in his 8-year war againstIran that took one million of their lives. Or, the totally concocted,grotesquely illegal and criminal US war against Iraq, 1990-1991, and 2003-present,killing over a million lives. Since the blood is not streaming out of theirbodies, they callously ignore the blood of Iranians, Iraqis, Afghanis, Syrians,Yemenis, Libyans, Somalis, Venezuelans, Nicaraguans, Salvadorans, Hondurans, Bolivians,Sudanese, Pakistanis, Nigerians, Vietnamese, Cambodians, Laotians, and citizensof many other countries, that is in fact on theirhands, and on the hands of countless US Generals, Colonels, Majors, Captains,Lieutenants, and their Navy and Marine counterparts, and common soldiers andsailors under the direction of these officers, the President Commander–in-Chief,and all their funders in the bipartisan US Congress comprised of 535 (s)electedrepresentatives, such as Mr. Engel, and the hands of millions of taxpayers.How many UScitizens know of the crimes our country systematically has committed, andcontinues to commit, throughout the world, crimes that are constant,remorseless, and fully documented? British playwright and Nobel Prize recipientHarold Pinter sadly commented: “Nobody talks about them. . . . It neverhappened. Nothing ever happened. Even while it was happening it wasn’thappening. It didn’t matter. It was of no interest”.[1]Without historical context, there is little capacity to critique the veracityof contemporary policies and rhetoric. So, it is believed, the US just couldn’tbe involved in patterns of criminal interventions; our origins just couldn’t bebuilt on dispossession and genocide. “That is not the American way.” But thefact is that it is the American way.We simply don’t know about it and don’t want to know about it. Impunity haserased memory.We would all beenlightened to re-read Barbara Tuchman’s classic, The March of Folly: From Troy to Vietnam,where she clearly articulates the horrific patterns of war folly thathave played out around the globe for millennia.[2]Only now it would be from Troy to Iraq, Iran, and Afghanistan.Culturalhistorians, philosophers, psychologists, essayists, and scientists caution usto seriously understand the past and its patterns. Sigmund Freud declared that inpsychic life, nothing of what has been formed in the past ever disappears.Everything that has occurred is preserved in one way or another and, in fact,reappears under either favorable or unfavorable circumstances. When impunitydominates, memory disappears and justice as a permanent value in human historyceases to exist. Sickness in the soul – of the individual, as well as of anation – results where nothing is real. Everything becomes pretend, lies toldover and over in many different forms throughout time.[3]Impunity infact produces severe disturbances within the individual and collective psyche, manifestingin behavioral psychopathologies of huge magnitude, such as wars. Think of aspoiled child who has never been taught boundaries or been held to account for harmfulbehavior. Collective as well as individual narcissism can lead to extreme antisocialconduct. Security is experienced through individuality, attracted toauthoritarianism, but not social justice. An acquisitive habit settles into theinner life, preempting an authentic inquisitiveand socially empathic mind. A social compact is destroyed in deference to privatization,creating anomie. Life is commodified.Disparity between the Haves and Have-Nots becomes extreme; today this is calledneoliberal economics. History is negated, concealing past traumas such asunspeakable genocides and deceitfully based wars.[4]United States of America was founded on two horrific genocides – the forcefuldispossession of Indigenous Americans, stealing their land, murdering millionswith impunity, and the forceful dispossession of Africans, stealing theirlabor, murdering millions with impunity. Their blood is still on our hands.So, we created akind of “religious” mythology about our country to conceal our painful shame. It is called exceptionalism,enabled by impunity. The psychological and cultural conditioning growing up inUS America, especially for a Eurocentric White male like myself, is emotionallyand intellectually comfortable. But the noble history we have been taught aboutourselves is fantastic fakery which continues to serve as a comfortable escapefrom experiencing and feeling the horrible truth of the collective shame of ourunspeakable criminal genocidal origins. Capitalism itself would not haveexisted without centuries of egregious colonial plunder of millions ofIndigenous Americans, or millions of enslaved Africans. Karma exists in somefashion, or as the saying goes, what goes around comes around. does the lie of being superior over others enable us to avoid extremelyunpleasant thoughts and feelings, but it also discourages asking enlightening,delving questions, about who we reallyareas a people. Why mess with the apparent successful myth of being exceptional? US policyoperates in paranoia with delusions of grandeur. By the early 1980s, with morethan a decade of reflection since being in Viet Nam, I sensed that this cultureof my birth and upbringing possesses an illness of psychotic denial. This feelingof superiority – of being uniquely exceptional – is very dangerous because itleads to a kind of stupor, or dangerous stupidity, uninterested in engaging intruly honest dialogue or discussion. It acts like a mindless, conceited fool. Andagainst stupidity we are defenseless since reason and diplomacy are confidentlyignored. It is much more dangerous than malice. Exceptionalism is deeplyconditioned in us. Butthoughtlessness – a suspension of critical thinking – today leads to a Planet-threateningnuclear, arrogant war-making society. Not unintelligent, but stupid. And thepower brokers, and many in the population, have a vested interest in remaining stupidto protect the comfortable original lie, that requires countlesssubsequent lies, in turn, to preserve that original lie. We have told ourselvesa fairy tale, and it feels good, serving as a successful technique of denial.Ourdangerousness was again evidenced by our latest act of war – targeted drone assassinationsat the Baghdad International Airport of Iran’s popular General Qasem Soleimani,and Iraqi military leader Abu Mehdi Muhandis. And until we the people are ableto literally take the money out of the Military-Congressional-Intelligence-Banking-WallStreet-Drug Complex, and the ability of that wealthy complex to absolutelycontrol with bribery our political process, we are doomed to war, climatecatastrophe, and extinction, or near so. after the assassination of Soleimani, the stock of major US weapon’smanufacturers surged as investors look forward to additional obscene profitsfrom more war. Trump had it right in his campaign promise to get the US out ofthe Middle East, but he has forsaken that goal in deference to the Neocons andelements of the Deep State, in cahoots with Congress. Ironically, all thismilitary bully posturing, murdering, lying, and disrespect for diplomacy, severelyendangers everybody. The Department of Defense (DOD) really should be describedas the Department of Offensive War (DOOW).What is requiredis a massive, widespread popular rebellion rooted in a global consciousnessthat tenaciously empowers us to replace our deceitful oligarchy. Why do we continueto allow this insane national misbehavior? Will we escape our stupor, andinstead feel, taste, and experience the countless liters of blood on our hands?If so, we might be awakened to the most important of all social emotions –empathy – that enables all humanity to live as one interconnected species, evenwith different cultures and ethnic backgrounds. It really is our choice, andthe stakes could not be higher – survival with dignity.Willson is a Viet Namveteran and trained lawyer. He has visited a number of countries examining theeffects of US policy. He wrote a psychohistorical memoir, Blood on the Tracks: The Life and Times of S. Brian Willson (PMPress, 2011), and in 2018 wrote Don’tThank Me for my Service: My Viet NamAwakening to the Long History of US Lies (Clarity Press). He is featured ina 2016 documentary, Paying the Price forPeace: The Story of S. Brian Willson, and others in the Peace Movement, (BoBoudart Productions). His web essays: brianwillson.com. He can be reached atpostmaster@brianwillson.com.[1] Harold Pinter, Various Voices: Prose, Poetry, Politics,1948-1998 (New York: Grove Press, 1998, 237.[3] S. Brian Willson, “ThePretend Society,” http://www.brianwillson.com/the-pretend-society/.

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