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December 25, 2001
Jennifer Loewenstein
Israel's
Human Rights Record
December 24, 2001
Sam Bahour
It
Happened One Morning
Yair Khilou
Why I Resisted
Being Drafted into the Israeli Army
Michael
Chisari
War
as Diversionary Tactic
Cockburn/St. Clair
Enron
and the Green Seal
December 21, 2001
Tom Turnipseed
War
Good for Bush
John Chuckman
The
First Victim in the
War on Terror
December 20, 2001
Lawrence
McGuire
Killing
Other People's Children
Miriam Rozen
Foundation
Without Representation?
Kenneth
Roth
A
Letter to Rumsfeld on
Military Tribunals
William Blum
Casualties:
Theirs and Ours
December 19, 2001
Marjorie
Cohn
Don't
Pre-Judge John Walker
Sam Bahour
Palestine
and You
December 18, 2001
Shahid
Alam
Clash
of Civilizations?
Carl Estabrook
Who
Opposes This War?
December 17, 2001
Edward
Said
Mahfouz
and the Cruelty
of Memory
December 16, 2001
Amira Howeidy
Dangerous By
Definition?
Bahour
and Dahan
Zinni's
Doomed Mission
December 15, 2001
John Isaacs
Bush's 12
Lumps of Coal
for Christmas
Dana Cook
The
Execution of bin Laden
Yusuf Agha
Tale of the
Tape:
Osama Gump?
December 14, 2001
Don Atapattu
A Conversation with
Norman
Finkelstein
December 13, 2001
Trojanow and Hoskote:
Nonsense
Mantras of Our Times
Dr. A.
Tajudeen
Afghanistan
and Zaire
Michael Williams
Prohibit
Prohibition
December 12, 2001
Jack McCarthy
Hitchens,
Walker
and Osama's Tape
Laura W. Murphy
Ashcroft's
Jihad
Shahid
Alam
Race
and Visibility
December 11, 2001
Joshua Orton
University
of Wisconsin
Won't Aid FBI Interviews
Philip
Farruggio
Cleansing
the Nation's Soul
Robert Fisk
Why I Was
Beaten
A Photographic Journal of Life
in an Afghan Refugee Camp
By Judith Mann
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War Diary
CIA's Assassination Plan a History of
Torture in US Prisons
bin Laden and Bush
Business Connections
Aisha Ikramuddin on the Hidden Hype
of US Food Bombs
Peter Linebaugh on
Pakistan
Christopher Hitchens' Love for Mrs. Thatcher
Jiang Zemin Tells Bush:
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Press
by Alexander
Cockburn
and Jeffrey St. Clair
The Memphis Blues Again:
Six Decades of Memphis Music Photographs
Photos by Ernest Withers
Text by Daniel Wolff
The New Intifada:
Resisting Israel's Apartheid
Edited by Roane Carey
A Pocket Guide to
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The
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December 26,
2001
In Praise of Unspeakable Things
By John Chuckman
When I turn to the opinion pages of a major newspaper
in the muscular, brawling Midwestern city where I grew up, it's
an unpleasantly fascinating experience, a little like what I
imagine a victim of child abuse might feel, smiling at a family
gathering, still painfully hoping to sense some normal affection
from someone who has done unspeakable things.
The newspaper's opinion pages recently
have overflowed like a plugged toilet with unappetizing sludge
you might call Franklin Graham patriotism. This a lethal mix
of baton-twirling Christianity and "Let's nuke 'em"
- all delivered in the heartwarming drawl of speakers at a Jesse
Helms testimonial dinner.
The poisonous sludge fairly bubbles with
sentiments along the lines of: "Like Mom was telling me
the time I was on leave from 'Nam and we first met Mickey Mouse
at Disney World."
Letters praising people for flying little
flags on their car antennas. Letters upbraiding people who let
their little car-antenna flags fall on the street. A letter telling
us how the writer stopped three times in one day to pick up fallen
antenna-flags off the street. A letter from someone plaintively
whining over a flag swiped from his lawn at night and pleading
for its quiet return. I suspect this last one was from a newcomer
to Chicago, because when I was growing up, everyone knew anything
left outside would disappear.
Letters and editorials crow over the
new show of patriotism, as though a lost art had been re-kindled,
or a great idea re-discovered. An exciting renaissance of jingoism.
It's as though the Baby-Boom generation had pulled their SUVs
en masse up to a revival-tent meeting and come forward to speak
in tongues and roll on the floor. Gratifying, indeed.
It's no use asking why that's a good
thing, although one suspects it's so they'll cheerfully pay the
cost of a bountiful Christmas this year, and of many to come,
for the those fine patriots in the defense industry. Likely too,
it's so they'll meekly embrace the serious loss of freedom Mr.
Bush has thoughtfully shepherded into law.
But the letter that meant the most to
me was the one commenting on a front-page picture of a Special
Forces soldier. The writer went into paroxysms of admiration
for this shining, clean-living model for America's youth, obviously
unaware that this was the bunch of thugs that unquestioningly
assassinated at least 20,000 civilian village leaders in Project
Phoenix during the Viet Nam War. Ah yes, I thought, might this
letter not easily, with a few names changed, be that of a middle-aged
German in, say, 1940 praising the pressed uniform and smart attitude
of a young SS officer as an example to all German youth.
Plus ça change, plus c'est la
même chose.
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