Make it a parking lot

Feelings in favor of genocide in America

I want to pick up the genocide theme from the last post a little bit by asking this question: How many readers of this blog of ever heard a acquaintance, neighbor, friend, or relative express a sentiment similar to this: ``We should just wipe all those hostile Muslim countries in the Middle East off the map and make it a parking lot''?? How do seemingly decent people get onto such a power trip?

Just a little while ago, a close neighbor of mine, a union man, told me, ``If the Iraqis don't like what we've done for them, we should pull out of there, surround the country, and nuke 'em into a sheet of glass.''

He was dead serious. I teased him with a zieg heil sign, but his conviction was unshakable. Ignorant as they are, these are extremely common, serious, heartfelt sentiments in America.

Many of these same folks well up with pride that the US was able to remove Saddam Hussein, clearly justified because Saddam was a killer who filled mass graves. That the US supported him in doing that is irrelevant, and the contradiction in opposing one form of mass murder while calling for another is lost in extreme cognitive dissonance. It amazes me how so many people in America can carry with seeming ease such deep contradictions. Perhaps pro-Israeli propaganda strongly reaches people here. And maybe the psy-ops operation known as Fox News is highly effective.

And just what is it that happens on Fox News and in other right wing media that stirs up such intense appeal for genocide, hence elimination of opposition to the American agenda? I very much like Media Matters for exposing the media expressions of notions favoring slaughter as legitimate policy. Yesterday, for example, they added to their voluminous collection of posts on the ejaculations of Fox News bully Bill O'Reilly:

Bill O'Reilly declared that "[t]he reason we're not winning in Iraq" is that the U.S. is "not tough enough" to take actions like "level[ing] Fallujah ... and blow[ing] the hell out of it."

Yeah right, Bill. The US simply has not killed enough yet, that's our problem. I guess he forgot that the US did level Fallujah in November 2004.

A poster in the comments section under this item gave an excellent run-down of similar O'Reilly remarks:

O'Reilly: You know in a sane world, every country would unite against Iran and blow it off the face of the Earth. That would be the sane thing to do. [link]

O'Reilly: You want to blow up the Coit Tower? Go ahead. [link]

O'Reilly: We cannot intervene in the Muslim world ever again. What we can do is bomb the living daylights out of them. [link]

O'Reilly is not alone in his use of Fox News to promote genocide. Here's how smarmy Neil Cavuto's guest a few days ago, Richard ``Bo'' Dietl, chairman and founder of private investigation firm Beau Dietl & Associates and a former detective with the New York City Police Department wants to solve the Middle East crisis:

Dietl: I believe Iran is going to stay kind of mute, because they understand -- and they did all see what we did in Iraq. And let's not be fooled by America. America is the strongest army there is on the Earth, and that we could go into Syria, into Damascus -- Damascus, and make a parking lot out of that tomorrow.

There you have it, the parking lot again. Perhaps these neo-Hitlers are want of a place to park (and refuel?) their SUVs.