Media and politicians wallow in jingoism as Libya casualties come home

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Imperial pontiffs: sacralizing war without end.

IT’S REALLY HARD TO WATCH as two  top figureheads of the American Corporate Empire— Obama and Hillary Clinton—bow their heads and mouth empty eulogies to honor the casualties in but the latest example of inevitable blowback to our nation’s criminal policies in the Mideast, policies which these high officials have done so much to craft.

In our view the soldiers killed in this incident could be classified as misguided patriots or clueless victims caught in the jaws of the colossal forces unleashed by US meddling across the globe, always in pursuit of corporate gain. Ambassador Stevens is another thing, however.  He obviously knew what he was doing, at least much more clearly than his underlings, and his work in Libya was demonstrably not to the benefit of ordinary Libyans, no matter how hard the system’s propagandists in the media and political class now try to paint him as practically a saint sacrificed upon the altar of freedom and democracy. As another piece in this edition makes clear, Stevens was “a Quiet American” in the Graham Greene’s mould. Like Greene’s antihero Alden Pyle, “a young American covert agent in Vietnam, exuding idealist notions of democracy and Americanism while trying to cobble together a ‘third force’ to stem the tide of the Vietnamese revolution, Stevens may have succumbed, perhaps accidentally, as a result of his own willful participation in the region’s sinister political intrigues.—The Editors

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