(Empty) Suits Support Syrian Slaughter

“Any instruction which convinces people that religious belief alone, without morality, suffices to satisfy God’s justice is destructive of all government and is far more harmful than it is ingenious and subtle.” Though Montaigne was discussing religion, substitute political ideology in the above, and you have the equivalent fallacy of groupthink i.e. “comradeship” among the leaders of the American nation state.

Once, this young man on the left, John Kerry, then a recovering but vital veteran, testified against war and slaughter in front of the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee—against the infamy of Vietnam. Now, the soulless, empty-eyed Secretary of State, below,  promotes a missile strike against the tiny nation of Syria–in the midst of another civil war. Despite the punitive nature of the strike, allegedly aimed at the Syrian dictator, the strike will kill innocents.

Kerry’s mirror image, the once and future war hero, Senator John McCain, who spent years in the Hanoi Hilton, a POW and victim of Vietnamese torture, once argued against this hideous crime, then, due to political ambition and his adherence to the Bush Administration ideology, reversed himself. Now McCain ignores the crimes and supports war 24/7, while he plays poker on his iPhone, during Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearings on missile strikes in Syria.

House Democratic Party leader Nancy Pelosi says, “it’s different this time” in comparison to the invasion of Iraq. (Hey, our guy doesn’t lie!) U.S. Senator, democrat Dianne Feinstein who saw slaughter and assassination up close and personal in her own San Francisco mayoral house, speaks in favor of war and internal spying. Both of these women, apparently, just want to be a part of the Good Old Boys’ Club.

Yet, a majority of the general public in Britain, France, and America oppose the risk of unintended consequences in Syria, where the expanded war will destroy villages and cities, while killing innocents and ignoring the hundreds of thousands of refugees, who need less fire from the American sky and more water from Mother Earth. How can you save a country by destroying it?

What happens to elected representatives when they step up and join the leadership? And why do they lose their principles then their critical thinking skills? Think of Obama’s elevation from Senate to the White House, the broken promises and reversal of principles. Now he and his competitors and mates, McCain, Boehner, Cantor, Feinstein, Pelosi, Kerry, make common cause. For power is the ultimate aphrodisiac; detached from morality, power seduces pride and turns reason into fanaticism and ultimately ruins the human being, who turns godlike in his or her hubris. (Check with Oedipus or Agamemnon, Clytemnestra or Cassandra.)

The U.S. Constitution, the Declaration of Independence, and the Statute of Liberty once gave the American state an edge in the propaganda wars aimed at winning hearts and minds in the struggle for a better world. Dictators were loath to discover among their own citizens, advocates of human rights or believers in American compassion:

Give me your tired, your poor, 

Your huddled masses,
Yearning to breathe free, 

The wretched refuse of your teeming shore, 

Send these, the homeless, tempest tost to me,

I lift my lamp beside the golden door.
–Emma Lazarus (Statue of Liberty)

Now, like Rome in her last days, America, has become a pariah state, sending out its legions and armadas, missiles and drones, while ignoring the power of a diplomatic handshake in the state house or a compassionate hug in the refugee camps–where survival—getting some water–is an hourly affair.

In a straight forward and insightful memoir, Defying Hitler, by Sebastian Haffner, the author, the German son of a Prussian bureaucrat, who fled the Nazi regime, discusses the German character, the proficiency and the inability to resist not only the authoritarian personality but also the insidious effects of “comradeship.” Haffner writes “comradeship relieves men of responsibility for their actions, before themselves, before God, before their consciences. They do what all their comrades do. They have no choice. They have no time for thought (except when they unfortunately wake up at night). Their comrades are their conscience and give absolution for everything, provided they do what everybody else does.”

The Senate, the House leadership, the White House residents, and the U.S. Supreme Court, have formed a club, where the elite members of the corporate state can protect each other against retribution for their unlawful constitutional acts, crimes against humanity—the use of torture, white phosphorous, drones and death missiles. But what really frightens the empty suits are ideas. The simple-minded citizens of America still believe in notions of idealism, alluded to in the Declaration of Independence and U.S. Constitution, and the compassion alluded to on the Statue of Liberty. Damn Manning. Damn Snowden. Damn Franklin, Jefferson, Washington and Lincoln. Damn that young man, navy veteran, John Kerry for speaking up when he was still a principled idealist.