Beppe Grillo's Blog

Bomb your own balls

photo: Reuters

Russell Harding, deputy commander of NATO’s Unified Protector mission in Libya, declared that he is not apologising for the Libyans killed by “friendly fire”. To call an assassination “friendly fire” is like defining a rapist as a seducer. “Looking down from above we cannot identify the nature of the vehicles” added Harding. Thus it’s the business of whoever is underneath when the liberators arrive. If they die it’ll be for a just cause, that of the United States and the allies, for not wanting to risk having their men on the battle ground.
Bombing is in the DNA of the Americans. It’s a way of maximising the results and reducing the losses. The civilians die and your soldiers are saved. A winning tactic, from Italy in 1943/45 when the people killed by the allies’ bombs numbered tens of thousands, with Dresden transformed into a blaze in which 25,000 Germans were burned alive, most of whom women and children. Right up to the triumph of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, where the atomic bombs were launched as a demonstration project in August 1945 when the war had practically finished with Hitler and Mussolini having died months earlier. The bombs kept going in Vietnam and Laos right up to Iraq of Bush senior, to the Iraq and Afghanistan of Bush junior and the Libya of Obama, the Nobel Peace prize winner, perhaps unknowingly.
NATO is putting pressure on Italy to take part in the bombing. I have a response for the NATO top brass: “Bomb your own balls!” NATO has become an instrument of aggression, but originally, its mission, never denied, was a defensive one. It’s enough to have a UN resolution and then in 24 hours to bomb Libya and Ivory Coast.
It’s well known that in wars, the number of civilian victims goes up all the time and it goes way beyond military victims. Cities have become the battle front. The anti-aircraft guns are placed near to hospitals as a deterrent, but it’s a useless exercise. Bombing should be prohibited. We’d need an international moratorium. You launch a bomb from the fuselage or a Tomahawk missile from a ship and whatever happens happens. The word “end” needs to be put on bombing. Any bombing is a potential assassination of innocent people. Let anyone who wants to do war, like Russell Harding, let them go onto the battle field and risk their life. Let Italy be out of any war, starting with Afghanistan and when people write about bombing, let them use the exact terminology: “Assassination!”

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Comments

During the Spring of heathen times, in the mountainous villages, while the villagers worked in the fields, the shamans entered their huts to trash and vandalize laying the blame on the evil witches who came from overseas. The frightened villagers were then told that bad things would happen if the witches weren't expulsed. The witches had to be exorcised if the villagers wished to sleep in peace. So, witch-hunts had to be organized. The villagers were told to wear the scariest masks and meet every Friday evening in the centre of the village where teams would be picked to go and bang with sticks and rosemary the walls of their huts raising as much racket as possible screaming hysterically, " Witches! Witches! Go away or bad things will happen to you." At the end of the Spring the shamans pronounced the village exorcised. Now the villagers could sleep with ease till the following Spring.

Stirring primordial fears to create hysterical climates, is still alive and well. All that is needed are words and images. The shamans of old have been replaced by racist show hosts. Showing on TV boatloads of immigrants continuously disembarking on an island like Lampedusa lacking shelters and showing streets teeming with thousands of wandering young Tunisians, followed by images of a few holiday homes viciously vandalized by unknowns and a racist guest smugly smirking, criminalizing the immigrants, predicting home invasions and robberies up and down Italy is no different than the shamans conjuring witches from overseas to scare the villagers of long ago. In the end, underneath our civility still pulses the easily triggered primordial fear of the "evil stranger" doing bad things to the village.

Posted by: Louis Pacella | April 10, 2011 12:14 AM

Perfectly agree with you Peter Fieldman.

Posted by: Andrea Cusati | April 9, 2011 09:03 AM

During the war in the Pacific,American servicemen learned that Japanese soldiers and marines did not surrender.

Rather that face the same problem when invading the Japanese homeland which American war planners estimated might result in up to 1 million American casualties, the President decided to drop the atom bomb.

It must be remembered that Japanese officers attacked the Imperial palace and tried to stop the Emperor from announcing Japan's surrender.

Posted by: tim Sullivan | April 8, 2011 10:52 PM

We seem to have forgotten the objective of the attacks on Libya. the aim was to remove Gaddafi, who is still there while hundreds, if not thousands of his countrymen are being killed and the country destroyed. Similarly in the Ivory Coast Mr Gbagbo refuses to go while many of his fellow citizens are being killed.
Their aim now, having realized the game is up, is to seek a golden retirement in some luxury safe haven. And probablty the U N and our Governments will do everything to satisfy their demands.
It is called strategic interests and has nothing to do with morality or human rights.

Posted by: peter fieldman | April 8, 2011 09:21 PM