Americas Banality of Evil by Jacob G. Hornberger!
(2019-09-27 at 15:25:22 )

Americas Banality of Evil by Jacob G. Hornberger

Everyone wonders whether President Trump is going to end up embroiling the United States in a war with Iran. He himself has said that he is "locked and loaded" for such a war, meaning that he is ready at a moments notice to order his army to begin bombing the country.

The reality is that President Trump has been waging war against Iran throughout his presidency. His war consists of economic sanctions, whose aim is to impoverish and inflict death on the Iranian populace, including children and seniors, as a way to bend Irans regime to his will or to have it ousted from power and replaced by a pro-United States regime.

Many United States of Americans do not think of sanctions as weaponry of war.

That is because they seem so benign.

After all, they are just rules and regulations. What is the big deal, right?

No bombs are dropping. No troops are invading and occupying Iran. No shootings. No torture. No Abu Ghraibs.

Just economic regulations that are blindly and brutally enforced by President Trumps loyal bureaucratic personnel within the federal government, both civilian and military.

In fact, sanctions are not really so much a weapon of war as they are a weapon akin to terrorism.

That is because they do not target enemy troops, as is done in war, but instead target the civilian population of a nation as a way to achieve a political goal.

That is what terrorists do too.

They also kill innocent civilians as a way to achieve a political goal.

Terrorism and sanctions are the weapons of the coward because the civilians they target have no real way to defend themselves against a suicide bomb or economic sanctions.

What would you do?

Place yourself in the shoes of an Iraqi family.

United States sanctions have caused your business to go under. You and your spouse have exhausted your savings. You have sold all your personal assets and heirlooms. The economy is tanking. You have three children, all of whom are hungry and ill.

What do you do? What can you do?

And if you retaliate by inflicting a terrorist attack on, say a United States imperial ship visiting the area, you are labeled a "terrorist" and either killed or hauled away to the Pentagons and Central Intelligence Agencys prison camp, torture center, and "judicial" system at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to stand trial before a military tribunal 20 years from now.

Killing Iraqi children for regime change!

Of course, it is not the first time that United States officials have used sanctions as a tool of foreign policy.

United States officials used them against Iraq when they were trying to replace Iraqs dictator, Saddam Hussein, with a pro-United States dictator. Ironically, Saddam had been a close partner and ally of the United States government but had later fallen out of favor with United States officials.

During the Persian Gulf War, the United States military intentionally targeted Iraqs water and sewage treatments plants, knowing that that would inevitably lead to illness among the Iraqi populace.

Then, throughout the 1990s federal bureaucrats in the President Clinton administration enforced a brutal system of sanctions that not only further impoverished a decimated populace but also prevented Iraqi officials from repairing those bombed-out water and sewage treatment plants.

The sanctions on Iraq ended up killing hundreds of thousands of Iraqi children, from both malnutrition and illness. United States officials could not care less.

All that mattered was regime change.

Any number of deaths within the civilian population would be considered warranted in the effort to achieve the political goal of regime change. In what can only be labeled a perverse banality of evil, United States politicians and bureaucrats actually blamed the deaths on Saddam, saying that he could have the deadly and destructive sanctions lifted any time he wanted by simply leaving office and letting a pro-United States dictator take his place.

United States Ambassador to the United National Madeleine Albright expressed the official view of the Washington, D.C., political and economic elite when she told Sixty Minutes that the deaths of half-a-million Iraqi children, while difficult, was "worth it."

Our "freedom and values"

Now, let me tell you what the Washington, D.C., politically elite crowd is going to say if Iran decides to finally strike at United States targets or United States allies in response to the death and destruction that President Trump and his bureaucratic cohorts in the the Pentagon, the Central Intelligence Agency, the State Department, and the Treasury Department have wreaked and continue to wreak on the people of Iraq.

They are going to spew the same sort of nonsense that President Bush and his national-security cohorts exclaimed after the 9-11-01 attacks - that Iran just hates the United States of America for its "freedom and values," has attacked us for no reason at all, and that it is now necessary for the United States government to unleash another war of retaliation and vengeance, one that will hopefully restore a pro-United States dictator to Iran, one similar to the Shah, who the Central Intelligence Agency installed into power in its 1953 coup that intentionally destroyed Irans democratic system.

Needed: a national crisis of conscience.

What is needed to bring this horrific economic terrorism to a halt?

A crisis of conscience among the United States of American people, especially those who go to church every Sunday.

A critical mass of Americans must finally come to the realization that killing innocent people, especially with the aim of achieving a political goal, is morally wrong and contrary to the laws of God, even when it is done through the economic terrorism of sanctions.

If and when a critical mass of United States Americans experience that crisis of conscience, Americas banality of evil will be brought to an end.

Reprinted here with permission from Mr. Jacob G. Hornberger of The Future of Freedom Foundation!! Their Great Website!!