Cockburn
/ St. Clair's Scorching New History of a Decade of War
Now Available!
Today's
Stories
May 1 / 3, 2004
Alexander Cockburn
Watching Niagra: Stupid Leaders, Useless
Spies, Angry World
April
29 / 30, 2004
Dave
Zirin
A Pawn in Their Game: the Unlonesome Death
of Pat Tillman
Kathy
Kelly
The Warden's Tour
Greg
Weiher
Fallujah and the Warsaw Ghetto: the Banality
of Evil
Michael
S. Ladah
Terrorism and Assassination: the Ultimate
Depception
Patrick
Cockburn
The Fallujah Mutinies
April
28, 2004
Christopher
Brauchli
Meet Congressman Know-Nothing:
Tom Tancredo
Wendy
Brinker
The Politics of the Numb
Faisal
Kutty
The Dirty Work of Canadian Intelligence
John
Chuckman
Seeking the Evil One
Mike
Whitney
Flag-Draped Coffins and the Seattle Times
Tom
Mountain
Rwanda and the F***** Word
Graeme
Greenback
The Iraqi Alamo: a CNN/CIA Production
Tracy
McLellan
The War Comes Home
M.
Junaid Alam
We are the Barbarians
William
Loren Katz
Iraq, the US and an Old Lesson
April 27, 2004
James
Davis
The Colombia 3 Acquitted
Dave
Lindorff
Chalabi as Prosecutor
Bruce
Schneier
Terrorist Threats and Political
Gain
Cockburn
/ Sengupta
British Generals Resist Calls for
More Troops to Aid Americans in Iraq
Walt
Brasch
Presidential Letters: The Day I
Was Asked to Feed an Elephant
Saul
Landau
The Empire in Denial and the Denial
of Empire
April 26, 2004
Patrick
Cockburn
Crossing the Shia Line: US Troops
Prepare to Enter Najaf
Wayne
Madsen
Trading Places: Will the US Go the Way of the USSR?
Grover
Furr
Protest, Rebellion, Commitment
Elaine
Cassel
Lies About the Patriot Act
Mickey
Z.
Inspired by Pat Tillman?
Greg
Moses
Bremer's De-De-Ba'athjfication Gambit
Gila
Svirsky
Anarchy in Our Souls
Uri
Avnery
Vanunu and the Terrible Secret
April 24 / 25, 2004
William
A. Cook
Tweedledee and Tweedledum: Kerry
and Bush Melt into One
Jeffrey
St. Clair
Stryking Out: a General, GM and the Army's Latest Tank
Brandy
Baker
A Revitalized Women's Movement? Let's Hope So
Robert
Fisk
A Warning to Those Who Dare Criticize Israel in the Land of Free
Speech
Ben
Tripp
October Surmise: a Case of Worst Scenarios
Nelson
Valdés
"Submit or Die": Iraq and the American Borg
Lucson
Pierre-Charles
Haiti's Return to the Future
Kurt
Nimmo
The CIA Killed Pat Tillman
Mark
Scaramella
Does Anybody Know Anything?
Patrick
Cockburn
The Return of Saddam's Generals
Gary
Engler
Welcome to La Paz: a Vacation in Tear Gas
Col.
Dan Smith
Whistling in the Dark: Israel, Palestine and Bush
Greg
Weiher
Iraq is Utterly Unlike Vietnam...
Elaine
Cassel
Life on the Outside: a Review
Vanessa
Jones
Letter from Australia: Why an Independent Won Sydney
Jim
French
Agriculture's Bullied Market
Hammond
Guthrie
Al Aronowitz, Bob Dylan and The Beatles
Poets'
Basement
Jones, Holt, Albert, LaMorticella
April 23, 2004
Ron
Jacobs
The Only Solution is Immediate Withdrawal
Dave
Lindorff
Imagination Deficit Disorder
Mokhiber
/ Weissman
Contractors and Mercenaries: the Rising Corporate Military Monster
Norman
Solomon
Country Joe Band, 2004: "What Are We Fighting For?"
Cynthia
McKinney
All Things Are Not Equal: the Perils of Globalization
CounterPunch
Wire
A Bitch Called Wanda
Karyn
Strickler
Sierra Club, Inc.
Hammond
Guthrie
Yellow Caked in the Face
Paul
de Rooij
Graveyard of Justifications: Glossary
of the Iraqi Occupation
April 22, 2004
Patrick
Cockburn
When Terror Came to Basra: "I
Saw a Minibus of Children on Fire"
Tanya
Reinhart
The Wall Behind Disengagement
Lance
Selfa
Why is Kucinich Still in the Race?
Josh
Frank
Street Fighting Man? Kucinich's Pulled Punches
Sen.
Robert Byrd
Bush Owes America Answers on Iraq
William
S. Lind
Why We Get It Wrong
Mickey
Z.
Undoing the Latches
Robert
Jensen
Why They Fast: Remembering the Victims of the World Bank
John
L. Hess
The New York Times from 30,000 Feet
April
21, 2004
Gary
Leupp
Yeats on Iraq
Alfredo
Castro
Colombia's Forgotten Prisoners
Dr.
Susan Block
Bush's Taliban Drug Deal
William
A. Cook
George 1 to George 2
Jack
Random
Iraq and Vietnam
Jean-Guy
Allard
Alarcon Meets the Editors
Mike
Whitney
Charade in the Desert
Bill
Christison
Only Major Policies Changes Can
Help Washington Now
| Weekend
Edition
May 1 / 3, 2004
Suicide Bomber
Neocons,
Nihilists and Annihilation
By CHRIS FLOYD
Homo
sapiens is the only species that dreams of its own total demise. Our
brief history of conscious thought is replete with vivid scenarios of
the end of life on earth. The brain-fevers we call religions have produced
most of these -- giddy, voluptuous nightmares of universal extinction,
usually by fire, at divine order. A favored remnant is always saved
in such tales, of course, but only after being transformed into some
different, higher order of being. The gross human body -- that bleeding,
fouling, endlessly replicating sack of earth -- is gleefully consigned
to eternal oblivion.
It
seems that some ineradicable nihilism pervades us, like a virus, now
dormant, now flaring: something in us that wants to die, to be done
with the long, overhanging doom of mortality -- and to take the world
with us. Our grandiose visions of the future seem to hide, at their
core, a secret, desperate anxiety about the profound meaninglessness
of existence -- an anxiety that often disguises itself in elaborate
fantasies of the afterlife, in dreams of "dominance" for one's
"own kind" (nation, tribe, faith, race, ideology, etc.), or
in the eroticizing of death, war and destruction.
Instincts for preservation, sentiments of affection, the drive for pleasure
-- from the most basic bodily urges to the most sublime creations and
apprehensions of the intellect -- act as counterweights to this dark
virus, of course. They provide for most of us, most of the time, enough
fragments of meaning -- or at least sufficient distraction -- to get
on with things, without too much resort to world-engulfing visions or
the extremes of nihilistic anxiety.
On
the individual level, the calibration of these competing impulses can
be intricate, subtle, ever-shifting, because the individual mind is
so complex and all-encompassing, yet so enclosed, so unlockably private
as well: an infinitely supple tool for managing the conflicts and contradictions
of reality. But on the broader level -- species, nation, group -- human
consciousness is, of necessity, a far more blunt and brutal instrument.
There,
our brain-fevers and anxieties rage more virulently, lacking the counterweights
of individual feeling and the quick, intimate responsiveness of the
private mind. In the group-mind, the fantasies that root in the muddy
fear of meaninglessness can emerge full-blown. Thought and discourse
are reduced to broad strokes, slogans, codes and incantations, with
little correspondence to reality. Awareness of this tendency can mitigate
some of its effects; but the group-mind's fundamental falsity and irreality
almost invariably infects the thoughts and actions of group leaders
-- and eventually many of the group members as well.
Thus
we can sometimes say, not entirely metaphorically, that nations "go
mad," hurtling themselves toward ruin, embracing self-destruction,
lusting for violence and death, sick with nihilism -- although this
sickness is always painted in the colors of patriotic fervor or religious
zeal, or both. Thus we can say -- again, with some accuracy -- that
humankind in general has suicidal tendencies, manifested most clearly
in the development of world-killing, species-ending nuclear weapons.
Now
draw these dangerous streams together, and you have a portrait of the
blunt and brutal group-mind at work in the leadership of the world's
most powerful nation. The folly, fantasy and death-fetish of the Bush
Regime -- long evident to anyone who cared to see -- were finally "revealed"
in the mainstream media recently by the quasi-official Establishment
oracle, Bob Woodward. His latest insider portrait, Plan of Attack, offers
-- in the usual, easily-gummed pabulum form -- a few tastes of the bitter
truth behind the Regime's mad, ruinous war crime in Iraq.
The
corrosive nihilism at the heart of the enterprise ate through the gaudily-painted
surface most tellingly in a single anecdote. Woodward asks George W.
Bush how he thinks history will regard his adventure in Iraq. Bush,
gazing out the window, shrugs and waves the question away. "History,
we don't know," he says. "We'll all be dead." No fine,
faith-filled talk here about God and Jesus and the immortal soul responsible
for its actions throughout all eternity -- the kind of zealous patter
Bush favors in public statements. This was just the cold, rotten, meaningless
core of his grand vision -- "we'll all be dead." So who cares?
Après moi, le deluge.
Indeed,
even as the world's attention remained fixed on the erotics of death
in Iraq, Israel and Palestine, Bush's minions were quietly advancing
his philosophy -- "we'll all be dead" -- with their geo-suicidal
plans for more nuclear weapons. Last week, the Pentagon's influential
Defense Science Board officially recommended the immediate development
of a new generation of "tactical" nuclear weapons -- along
with a new, Nietzschean will to use them, UPI reports.
Yes,
this is the same group that developed a plan in 2002 for "provoking
terrorist groups into action." The DSB wanted the Pentagon to foment
terrorist attacks in order to flush the terrorists out of hiding so
they could then be "crushed." The Pentagon never publicly
rejected this morally insane scheme, first uncovered by the Los Angeles
Times; perhaps we've already seen it in action, in Madrid, Riyadh, Istanbul
or Bali.
In
any case, the DSB's nuclear dreams are fast becoming a reality. This
year, Bush quadrupled funding for key nuclear weapons development programs;
at $6.6 billion, total U.S. nuclear weapons spending is now 50 percent
higher than the Cold War average, California's Tri-Valley Herald reports.
And Bush officials told Congress last month that the Regime is officially
gutting the 2002 "Moscow Treaty" on arms control, AP reports.
Instead of reducing stockpiles to treaty levels, the Regime is exercising
the agreement's "get-out" option (which made the pact meaningless
in the first place), in order to retain "sufficient warheads"
for a "robust" posture in the face of unspecified "world
events," officials testified.
What
"world events" are they secretly dreaming of, these death-fetishists,
these unconscious nihilists, mired in their group-mind fog? What voluptuous
nightmares will require their "robust" attention? How many
world-devouring warheads will be "sufficient" to at last quell
their anxiety, their all-too-human craving for oblivion?
Chris
Floyd is a columnist for the Moscow
Times and is a regular contributor to CounterPunch.
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