Robert Gates Confesses Appalling Lack Of Imagination

Robert Gates, continuing the fine American tradition of monstrous idiots in charge of the Defense Department, recently criticized the Associated Press for publishing a photograph of a dying US Marine.

Gates is reported to have written to AP the following:

"Your lack of compassion and common sense in choosing to put this image of their maimed and stricken child on the front page of multiple American newspapers is appalling. The issue here is not law, policy or constitutional right—but judgment and common decency."

The photograph in question was part of a series taken by an embedded AP photographer, and depicts the fallen Marine, both legs burned and mangled by an explosion from a rocket-propelled grenade, being helped by two other Marines. While his condition stabilized enough to allow him to be evacuated, he later died of his wounds.

While it is certainly the case that the parents of this soldier are likely to experience additional pain knowing their son's life and death are now part of the very public, and strident, debate over the war, Gates' remark about a "maimed and stricken child" make it sound like the Taliban just ran over a three-year-old, instead of the truth—Lance Corporal Joshua Bernard died because Robert Gates, and Barack Obama, acting in the name of the American people, ordered him into harm's way. They put the uniform on his back. They gave him the guns and ammunition he carried to kill the Afghan people. And the American people have a right and a responsibility to see what it looks like when somebody they order into battle gets his legs blown off by people who don't want Americans occupying their country.

So important is this right and responsibility that the United States Constitution protects the press in its job and duty of supplying Americans with the hard facts, of peace and of war. And for the most part, the US media have done an awful job of reporting the facts of the the US Terror Wars. Instead, they have repeatedly acted as propaganda arms of the US government.

For once, a media outlet did its job, properly, and showed Americans what the cost of the war actually looks like.

And what they got in return was a harsh rebuke from the Secretary of Defense, who is supposed to be protecting and defending the Constitution.

Instead, Gates made this remarkable confession:

"I cannot imagine the pain and suffering Lance Corporal Bernard’s death has caused his family."

Yeah, why would he? His family is not at risk for losing a loved one in these idiotic wars. The vast majority of Americans are at no risk for losing anybody they care about in these idiotic wars. Meanwhile, thousands upon thousands of innocent people all over the world, but particularly in Iraq and Afghanistan, have been murdered by American troops.

That also gets no notice, no coverage, and is habitually dismissed by US military officials as misreporting of justified killings of the "enemy", even when the victims are children and babies. After investigations show in fact Americans did unjustly kill innocents, the US government tosses a little money at any survivors, says "sorry...whatever", and keeps on committing war crimes.

So long as the meatheads in charge of the wars can honestly say they cannot imagine the pain and suffering of the people upon whom they inflict their war crimes, these crimes will continue to seem to them just abstract policy issues, instead of the death-&-destruction horrors they are perpetrating.

Oh, and just so we're clear, it isn't just Americans committing these crimes. NATO countries are helping and are just as responsible. Recently, as you may have read, Germany made its contribution to the ongoing murdering of Afghan citizens by NATO troops.

Here's the German excuse (imagine the accent):

"According to the information available to us there have been no civilian casualties...had civilians been present, the air strikes could not have been called in.”

Yeah...right. Well, at least the Germans have learned well the lessons of their American masters. Always blame the victims for transmuting into "enemies" the moment the NATO terror bombs start falling.

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UPDATE: "The top U.S. commander in Afghanistan said Saturday he was convinced that civilians, in addition to militants, were among those killed in a NATO airstrike that killed at least 90 people in northern Afghanistan."

Note that the above is the original wording of the article, which was then changed to read "among those wounded", no doubt after CNN buckled to US military propagandists.

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The question is, why do the German people, the British people, the Italians, the French, the Canadians, the Icelanders??...continue to tolerate their countries' support for this American catastrophe? Good friends should know when to say "You should stop...this is a mistake."

All these wars are accomplishing is making the hatred of the United States and the West a more virtuous and vital option for the poor people of the world, people whose economic despair, combined with religious fanaticism fuels their response to the US's and the West's own terroristic crimes.

The world writhes in its madness now.

Are these not death throes?

(jk)