"...Are we the new masters of morality, imposing our order on a world that will someday be grateful?..."
America the Destroyer
By James Carroll
Columnist
The Boston Globe
Published on Tuesday, March 25, 2003
commondreams.org
<<...LOOK AT WHAT America has become. We are moving on steel treads across a harsh landscape as a creature of destruction, kicking up clouds of unreality through which we see illusions of our efficiency and virtue.
The prodigality of our nation's claims for itself is staggering. We can decide alone when the use of overwhelming violence is justified. Before the onslaught of our weapons, enemy resistance will be nil. The display of ''shock and awe,'' an unprecedented bombardment aimed less at human beings and buildings than at the human imagination, will bend the world to our will. Unlike all previous powers in history, we can wage war humanely. Our success will be so complete that no other nation will challenge us -- or imitate us. The time for complexity is past: You are for us or against us. Either way, your world will be a far safer place when we are finished. Those who opposed this war will sheepishly return to the fold, the flock of our dominance. We are so good.
Young Americans in uniform are now dying for this cloud of illusion -- dying of it -- and so are Iraqis of all ages and stations -- uniformed and naked. When the dying begins, the arguments leading up to the war cease to have resonance. Who is debating anymore the hazards of intervention, the relationship of ends and means, the question of whether Saddam Hussein is Osama bin Laden's partner or nemesis?...>> |
