On Human Scum
The North Korean government has introduced into political discourse the useful term "human scum." It applied it to John Bolton, a neocon top State Department official (Undersecretary of State for Arms Control and International Security) in charge of accusing selected countries of acquiring or seeking to acquire WMDs. He acknowledges that Israel has nukes although he declares this is not a problem. But he has a list of enemy states whose weapons programs, real or imagined, justify the overthrow of their governments. He has claimed that Cuba's biomedical industry, which provides cheap pharmaceuticals and vaccinations sold worldwide, constitutes a "biological weapons program," a charge rejected by former President Jimmy Carter last year. He is the administration point-man behind the "Syrian Accountability and Lebanese Sovereignty Restoration Act" that imposes a U.S. trade embargo on Syria, and is actively preparing for U.S. actions (in concert with Israel) against Syria. (Perhaps the Syrians, following the model of Iraq's Baathists, are now pleading for a deal with Bolton as well as Perle and all the above-named scumbags.)
Bush, Rumsfeld, Cheney, Wolfowitz, Wurmser, Perle, Bolton, Feith, the whole lot of them are planning unjustifiable attacks on poor weak countries, lying through their teeth every step of the way, as they plan to deploy more American youth to achieve their world-changing mission. Their Iraq imbroglio has so far cost at least 389 U.S. lives (265 in combat, most of those in "post-war" combat----if that makes any sense), officially thousands injured (lots of head wounds and limb amputations); and of course, 10s of 1000s of Iraqi civilians, and no less significantly, Iraqi soldiers doing what soldiers are universally entitled to do: resist invasion. What is scummier than to produce such suffering, and to eagerly plan to inflict more? To scrupulously avoid human combat for any cause in their own personal experience, yet gleefully use others of their own countrymen to inflict death abroad? To dismiss offers of peace, while demanding that sovereign states grovel in their service? I would suggest that the "human scum" appellation be applied very selectively, but the Bush administration offers many appropriate designees. Human scum rules at present, but decent people, once sufficiently irritated by the toxicity and stench, can surely clean it up.
Gary Leupp is a professor of History at Tufts University and coordinator of the Asian Studies Program. |
