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Resistance breaking out:Imperialists censor sergeant Lorentz in connection to Iraqby mousnonya and mim3@mim.org A U.S. Army Reserve sergeant in Iraq has written a cogent essay explaining why Uncle Scam cannot win the war in Iraq(1). Consequently, he is being called to the carpet and faces legal sanctions. The charge is dereliction of duty -- defeatism! (2) That's right--just like in Hitlerite Germany. Wearing the uniform, thinking the wrong thoughts and daring to put them to paper leads to trouble in the united $tates. MIM supports the struggle of oppressors such as Sgt. Lorentz to cease taking action for war. Sgt. Lorentz may have figured out that he is on the wrong side. As in the other long-running occupations historically, we are also finding out about the tip of the iceberg of military resistance. CNN reported on October 15th that some of the reservists in Iraq may have disobeyed orders: "The military said all 19 members of the Army's 343rd Quartermaster Company --- which has been in Iraq for nine months -- were told to report to duty Wednesday to deliver fuel from Tallil to Taji, a dangerous area north of Baghdad."(3) They did not carry out the task and family members say the vehicles and fuel were unsafe. At the same time, indications continue to arrive on the scale of the cover-up of politics in Iraq in general. The pace of casualties has increased since Bu$h declared major fighting over, but it appears that the government does not report all the insurgent activities spread across Iraq for fear of demoralizing the u.$. public and the soldiers. Moreover, all the murder and torture photos from the Abu Ghraib prison scandal have yet to be released, because the imperialists fear the global counter-attack that would happen. The fear of the counter-attack leads to more public ignorance of what is really happening in Iraq, and the war-mongers hope to keep their war going that way. "Freedom" and "democracy" hardly seem meaningful when the government is able to keep its citizens ignorant about the war it is supporting or having second thoughts about. That is also the reason that George Bush said in the presidential debates that he does not want to debate the war because he's worried about the "message it sends" to the troops. There is a solid 40% of the u$a that once it gets into a war, it has no way of getting out, because that substantial minority considers it unwise or even unpatriotic to criticize any war. Permanent war is the thinking of much of Amerika: a substantial minority of people will simultaneously brag about belonging to a "free country" while simultaneously trying to shut up critics. When MIM points out that capitalism censors the press all the time, we usually send readers straight to our prison literacy outreach programs(4). Our attempts to bring education to those imperialism chose not to educate are usually sabotaged by the pigs; however, there are dozens of other examples of capitalist pig censorship: all press under capitalism must sell advertising to survive -- and so advertisers have a major impact on the editorial policies of journals. Think you have free speech? Think again! This case of imperialist censorship should make clear the illusory character of "freedom" under capitalism. Here we have a career soldier who likely wants the imperialists to win and even has some insights about how they could. But instead of being listened to he is getting what he deserves: a slap in the face! MIM just wishes we could be the ones to slap Sgt. Lorentz to his senses. Instead, he is being victimized by his (former?) imperialist masters for his insolence and probably getting a lot of double-talk, and mixed messages. Sgt. Lorentz is now learning more wrong lessons from a system of lies that can only teach wrong lessons. Our sympathy for $gt. Lorentz is a direct function of his commitment to eradicating his 20 years of crimes by taking up the anti-imperialist banner. The lesson here is clear: the imperialists even censor their own ilk. Consequently, those who care about civil liberties should not expect the imperialists to defend them. Speaking of independent media, MIM generally does not talk about Libertarian or "Old Right" sites like "LewRockwell.com" or "antiwar.com." These sites are examples of a minority strand of capitalists who think that war is bad for business and that it should be opposed in the name of the market. It makes for interesting, principled, but theoretically incoherent, reading. The "libertarians" have not yet realized that capitalism engenders and even requires the wars that they rightly oppose. So while MIM can salute capitalists like Murray Rothbard for their anti-war stance the fact is that capitalism generates wars because the arms industries stand to profit from them as do the banks! No amount of wishful thinking will change the facts: greed is indifferent to the suffering it engenders.
1) Why We Cannot Win, by Al Lorentz 20 September 2004,
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