So says IOZ.

UPDATE: And how did I miss this?

I do not even admit to the occasional necessity of war, but even if I did, war would nevertheless and perhaps even more so always, always be wrong, always a failure, always a crime.  If Hitler himself arises from the grave tomorrow and directs an immense army against all the other peoples of the world, we are nevertheless obliged not simply to lament the necessity of fighting him, but to atone for it.  If necessity may sometimes suspend temporarily that which is actually right and just, it never abrogates it.  And in any case, this is not the case.  Hitler has not risen from his grave; our victims are no less human than we are; “those loyal to Qaddafi” are also people; it is not our place to determine that the average “Taliban fighter” deserves to die, less yet to go out and kill him.

(Read the whole thing for the full flavor.)

A skeptic might theorize that Osama bin Laden is in fact not dead but alive and well in the CIA witness protection program somewhere. After all, the best evidence of his death has already been buried at sea, and U.S. officials are trying to decide whether a photo they have of his corpse is just too graphic to release. After all, Osama has been great for government business over the last ten years. His “disappearance” now won’t undo or slow down any of that, and the timing couldn’t be better for Obama.

I myself don’t go so far (despite the U.S. government’s habit of telling outrageous lies to “its” people). I merely note that the killing of bin Laden by Team America doesn’t make me feel any safer. Quite the opposite. And the threat of reprisals for his death is already being used by U.S. officials to remind us how much we need them.

You know what would make me feel safer? If the government which purports to act in my name stopped fucking with people all over the world.

“Governments don’t live together, people live together.” (H/T Bryan Brown at the ArchAngel Institute.)

Or maybe it’s really not Morlock’s fault. Maybe war just does that to people. In which case we should never, ever, go to war, unless it’s actually to defend ourselves. We should bring all of “our” troops home this very minute.

Morlock was sentenced yesterday to a mere 24 years in prison for willful and gratuitous and inexcusable murder. A former client of mine was convicted by a jury and sentenced by a judge to 45 years in prison for justifiably defending himself and his son and friends on his own property from two angry men brandishing guns. I blame myself — but not only myself — for his conviction, and I swear to God if it could free him I’d turn my bar card in to the supreme court in less than a second. Every day I await and look for the decision of five fallible men in Indianapolis, who hold his fate in their hands. Our justice system deserves no respect. Neither does our military. As someone who enlisted at the age of 17 and “served” until the age of 23, I generally feel sorry for those who’ve made the same supreme mistake I did, whose parents didn’t have enough wisdom to impress upon their children that working at Burger King would be infinitely more honorable. But I don’t feel sorry for Morlock. He’d be better off dead. It would be even better if he’d never been born.

And still . . . let me offer an argument for the existence of God, and a sign that a deep and abiding and holy decency remains buried deep within the American spirit, a decency that on occasion even the State is forced to recognize. Let me hold up the example of Hugh Thompson, as described in the words of the citation accompanying the Soldier’s Medal, which he was finally awarded almost 30 years after his heroic actions during the My Lai massacre in Vietnam:

For heroism above and beyond the call of duty on
16 March 1968, while saving the lives of at least 10
Vietnamese civilians during the unlawful massacre of
noncombatants by American forces at My Lai, Quang
Ngai Province, South Vietnam. Warrant Officer
Thompson landed his helicopter in the line of fire between
fleeing Vietnamese civilians and pursuing American
ground troops to prevent their murder. He then
personally confronted the leader of the American ground
troops and was prepared to open fire on those American
troops should they fire upon the civilians. Warrant Officer
Thompson, at the risk of his own personal safety, went
forward of the American lines and coaxed the Vietnamese
civilians out of the bunker to enable their evacuation.
Leaving the area after requesting and overseeing the
civilians’ air evacuation, his crew spotted movement in a
ditch filled with bodies south of My Lai Four. Warrant
Officer Thompson again landed his helicopter and covered
his crew as they retrieved a wounded child from the pile of
bodies. He then flew the child to the safety of a hospital at
Quang Ngai. Warrant Officer Thompson’s relayed radio
reports of the massacre and subsequent report to his
section leader and commander resulted in an order for the
cease fire at My Lai and an end to the killing of innocent
civilians. Warrant Officer Thompson’s Heroism
exemplifies the highest standards of personal courage and
ethical conduct, reflecting distinct credit on him, and the
United States Army.

See:

The Truth Behind Quantico Brig’s Decision to Strip PFC Manning, by his lawyer David E. Coombs

Manning Prosecutors: The Enemy is Us, by Thomas L. Knapp at the Center for a Stateless Society

Sailors take aim at new recruiting slogan, by Philip Ewing at the Navy Times

Not even American propaganda could whitewash the fact that the U.S. has imposed Hosni Mubarak’s regime on The Egyptian People for decades.  His government is not merely our ally but one of our closest client regimes.  We prop him up, pay for his tools of repression, and have kept him safe for 30 years from exactly this type of popular uprising — all in exchange for his (a) abducting, detaining and torturing whom we want, (b) acting favorably toward Israel, and (c) bringing stability to the Suez Canal.

And yet it’s remarkable how self-righteously our political and media class can proclaim sympathy with the heroic populace, and such scorn for their dictator, without really reconciling our national responsibility for Mubarak’s reign of terror.  Thanks to this Look Over There genre of reporting, we’re so accustomed to seeing ourselves as The Good Guys — even when the facts are right in front our noses that disprove that — that no effort is really required to reconcile this cognitive dissonance.  Even when it’s this flagrant, we can just leave it unexamined because our Core Goodness is the immovable, permanent fixture of our discourse; that’s the overarching premise that can never be challenged.

Read the whole thing.

Greenwald is one of those bloggers who often makes me wonder why I even bother.