The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #125469 Message #2786539
Posted By: Little Hawk
11-Dec-09 - 08:30 PM
Thread Name: BS: Afghan War mistake or wise
Subject: RE: BS: Afghan War mistake or wise
I agree that the bombing done in Shock and Awe had many tactical reasons that made sense too...that's why I said "it had multiple objectives". That is often the case with bombing of metropolitan targets. Nevertheless, I consider such bombing to be, among other things, terrorism.
I think that almost all governments commit terrorist acts when they go to war. It's virtually inevitable that they will. That's one of the worst things about war. They only call it "terrorism", however, when someone else does it to them. That's propaganda for you. The propaganda is crafted to justify the war and to motivate the soldiers and civilians at home to support it. If you look at newsreels of the Third Reich, they gave huge attention to various terrorist acts committed against Germans by the Allies in order to stiffen the will of their fighting men and their civilians. And it worked. And a fair amount of what they said was even true! (although usually exaggerated) Had they won the war, they could have used a lot of what happened to try the "Allied war criminals" at Nuremberg, and the criminals on trial would have been Russians, Americans, and British.
The only thing they neglected entirely to tell Germans about was the immense crimes being committed by German personnel on behalf of the Nazi high command!
That was terrorism too...and terrorism to a shocking extent...but it was not mentioned in their media.
We have a mass media just like that. They only see terrorists where they are told to see terrorists...in the ranks of the Islamic "enemy". They do not label government-sponsored homegrown terrorism for what it is.
Am I drawing moral equivalence between the Nazis and the present USA? No. I am simply pointing out how government propaganda works. It sees evil only where it wants to see evil.