I Can Get It For You, Cheap!

The Blackwater horror of September 16 in the year 2007 has sinister repercussions that spread past its contemporary impact. Among other examples, both infamous and obscure, it is particularly reminiscent of the Amritsar, India, massacre of 1919, when the British open-fired on a peaceful crowd and over 1000 civilians were killed. There were investigations, of course, as many good Brits were outraged. However, after much deliberation, the commanding officer, Gen. Dyer, was actually acquitted. In a British court. Amritsar became a seminal rallying point for the Independence movement, with Mahatma Gandhi's Congress party gaining a major foothold, though 1947 was a long way off yet. Michael O'Dwyer, the Governor of the Punjab, who approved of the action that led to the massacre, was later assassinated. It's not as if the people who are affected by things like massacres just move on and forget about them. If anything, the seeds of revenge are planted, and very deeply.

It will be interesting to see how the Iraqis themselves will respond to any outcome of the Blackwater case, and just how tolerant they will be to any acquittals that might result.

Imperialism inevitably involves conflict between the conquering force, which parades itself as 'good guys' and the anonymous, faceless victims of the conquered, who often happen to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, and in numbers that render them, en masse, as virtually 'expendable'. Life becomes especially cheap when it is anonymous. So, the less the US knows about these victims as persons, the better for the neocons and their ilk. Imperialism has very little to do with humanity.

America's nouveau dabbling in Empire is not only a complete failure, it puts much of the world at toxic risk. If the US embraced a benevolence (or at the very least, respect) instead of bellicoseness, other nations would not be so compelled to seek out so-called weapons of mass destruction. The US is driving various nations into this posture, but that's what the neocons want, so as to justify their insane agenda.

We can identify this process, but what is to be done?
Chimpeach! Time is running out.