![]() World's Most Evil and Lawless Institution? The Executive Branch of the U. S. Government. Editor's Note: The following is the latest in a series on the Executive Branch of the United States. Once upon a time, a long long time ago, when I was young and naïve, I had hoped that beauty standards for women would broaden to that of men from the 1990's and earlier. How would you regard the leaders of a foreign power who sent machines of war that suddenly appeared over your home, dropped bombs which killed dozens of your. It is not discussed in polite company or at the dinner tables of the powerful, rich and famous. Parents do not teach it to their children. Best- selling authors do not write about it. Politicians and government officials ignore it. Intellectuals avoid it. High school and college textbooks do not refer to it. TV pundits do not comment on it. Teachers do not teach it. Journalists from the nation's most highly regarded TV news shows, newspapers and magazines, do not report it. Columnists do not opine about it. Editorial writers do not editorialize about it. Religious leaders do not sermonize about it. Think tanks and professors do not study it. Lawyers do not litigate it and judges do not rule on it. The courageous few who do not keep this secret, who try to break through to their fellow citizens about it, are marginalized and ignored by society at large. To begin to understand the magnitude of this secret, imagine that you get into your car in New York City, and set out for a drive south, staying overnight in Washington DC, a four- hour drive. As you leave, you look out your window to the left and see a row of bodies, laid end to end, running alongside you all the way to DC. You spend the night there, and set out early the next morning for Charleston, South Carolina, an 1. Again, looking out your window, you see the line of bodies continues, hour after hour. You are struck that most are middle- aged or older men and women, younger women, or children. You arrive in Charleston, check into your hotel, have a good meal, and get up early the next morning to drive to Miami, another 1. And once again, hour after hour, the line of bodies continues, all the way to your destination. If you can imagine such a drive you can begin to get a feeling for former Defense Secretary Robert Mc. Namara's mid- range estimate of 1. U. S. Senate Refugee Committee estimated 4. Later estimates as more information has become available, e. To the 4. 30,0. 00 to 2 million civilians killed in Vietnam must be added those killed in Laos, Cambodia, Afghanistan, Iraq and many other nations (see below), all those wounded and maimed for life, and the many millions more forced to leave villages in which their families had lived for centuries to become penniless refugees. Executive Branch leaders – Democrat and Republicans, conservative and liberal—have killed wounded and made homeless well over 2. U. S. Those responsible have not been punished, but rewarded. The memory of it has been erased from national consciousness, as U. S. Millions of civilian lives swept under the rug, forgotten, as if this mass murder and maiming, the destruction of countless homes and villages, this epic violation of basic human decency—and laws protecting civilians in time of war which U. S. Grandparents, parents and children. Decent, hard- working people, each with a name, a face, and loved ones; people with dreams and hopes, and as much of a right to life as you or I. Over one million civilians dead, over 1. Vietnam alone, forgotten. And particularly remarkable is how this has happened. Totalitarian regimes go to great lengths—strict censorship, prison for those violating it—to cover up their leaders' crimes. But in America, the information is available. All that is needed to keep America’s secret is to simply ignore it. Americans keep this secret because facing it openly would upend our most basic understandings about our nation and its leaders. A serious public discussion of it would reveal, for example, that we cannot trust Executive Branch leaders’ human decency, words, or judgment. And more troubling, acknowledging it would mean admitting to ourselves that we have been misleading our own children, that our silence has robbed them of the truth of their history and made it more likely that future leaders will continue to commit acts that stain the very soul of America. It is a matter of indisputable fact that the U. S. Executive Branch has over the past 5. ![]() It is also undeniable that it has committed countless acts, as no less an authority than U. S. Secretary of State John Kerry noted in regard to Vietnam, which have been . Thirty years later, a Nuremberg prosecutor speaking of the U. S. Executive Branch is adding to it crimes, as it conducts secret drone and Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) ground assassinations of individuals without due process. The rationalizations by which even decent human beings allow themselves to ignore their leaders’ mass murder, e. Human civilization, through its body of international law, has defined which acts are both immoral and illegal even in times of war. And a citizen’s first responsibility is to oppose his or her own government’s crimes, not those of others. LOT: NAME: WINNING BID: 2: The Beatles Yellow Submarine Alarm Clock: $3384.43: 3: The Beatles Yellow Submarine Wristwatch: $3241.14: 4: Yellow Submarine Figural Banks. Home and Away is an Australian television soap opera. It was first broadcast on the Seven Network on 17 January 1988. The following is a list of characters that first. Although America's media, intellectual, political and economic elites turn their heads pretending they just don't see U. S. Executive massacres of civilians in Korea. Such careful work has been supplemented by numerous reports from such organizations as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch. Until now, the issue of U. S. Executive Branch leaders' disregard for innocent human life has mainly concerned their treatment of . But as the sinews of a surveillance state and police- state infrastructure have been steadily strengthened at home since 9/1. Executive Branch mentality that has been so indifferent to innocent human life abroad will increasingly threaten increasing numbers of Americans in coming years. No honest human being can deny what the facts below reveal about the U. S. Executive's institutional evil and lawlessness. WORD: DEFINITION: GROUPING: 1: abash: to make ashamed: verb: 2: abate : to put an end to: verb: 3: abbess: a female superior or governess of a nunnery: noun: 4: abbey.The only serious question is what we are willing to do about it. Can Americans Trust the U. S. Executive Branch? Columnist George Will recently summarized the fundamental issue underlying not only Edward Snowden's recent whistleblowing, but all controversies about U. S. Executive Branch behavior: . Executive which hides its activities from its own citizens. But can we trust the Executive’s Branch’s commitment to truth, law and democracy, or even basic human decency? Judging its actions, not words, over the past 5. And we might begin with some basic questions: How would you regard the leaders of a foreign power who sent machines of war that suddenly appeared over your home, dropped bombs which killed dozens of your neighbors and your infant daughter, wounded your teenage son, destroyed your home, and then forced you into a refugee camp where your older daughter had to prostitute herself to foreigners in order to support you, your wife and legless son? Executive Branch officials created over 1. South Vietnam.)What would you think of foreign leaders who occupied your country, disbanded the military and police, and you found yourself at the mercy of marauding gangs who one day kidnapped your uncle and cousin, tortured them with drills, and then left their mangled bodies in a garbage dump? Executive Branch officials occupied Iraq, disbanded the police, and failed to provide law and order as legally required of Occupying Powers.)How would you view a foreign power which bombed you for five and a half years, forced you and your family to live in caves and holes like animals, burned and buried alive countless of your neighbors, and then one day blinded you in a bombing raid that leveled your ancestral village, where you had honored your ancestors and had hoped after your death to be remembered by your offspring? Executive Branch leaders massively bombed civilian targets in Laos for nine years, Cambodia for four years.)What would you think of foreign assassins whom as Jeremy Scahill reports in Dirty Wars, broke into your house at 3: 3. And how would you feel toward the leaders of the nation that had fielded not only these JSOC assassins but thousands more, who were conducting similar secret and lawless assassinations of unarmed suspects while covering up their crimes in many other countries around the world? Drones hover twenty- four hours a day over communities in northwest Pakistan, striking homes, vehicles and public spaces without warning. Their presence terrorizes men, women and children, giving rise to anxiety and psychological trauma among civilian communities. Those living under drones have to face the constant worry that a deadly strike may be fired at any moment, and the knowledge that they are powerless to protect themselves. Every one of these acts, and countless more, have been committed by the U. S. Executive Branch over the past 5. If we judge them by their actions, not words, we must face the following facts: -- The U. S. Executive Branch killed in Vietnam from a U. S. Senate Refugee Subcommittee estimated 4. Robert Mc. Namara, to the two million civilians estimated by Nick Turse. And it wounded at least 1,0. Refugee subcommittee (3); assassinated through its Phoenix Program an officially estimated 2. Executive has, in Laos, conducted nine years of bombing which has beenestimatedby Laos' National Regulatory Authority to have killed and wounded a minimum of 3. It also created over 5. Plain of Jars.- - The U. S. Executive has, in Cambodia, killed and wounded tens of thousands of civilians by carpet- bombing villages from 1. All told, after Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger secretly bombed and invaded Cambodia, waging a war that made the U. S. Executive responsible for casualties on all sides, the U. S. Senate Refugee Subcommittee estimated that 4. Executive's aggressive war.(5)*- - The U. S. Executive under Bill Clinton in Iraq, John Tirman reports in The Deaths of Others, imposed an embargo so severe that . Bush, as the Occupying Power, was legally responsible for maintaining law and order. Its war was also an aggressive war as outlawed at Nuremberg. It thus bears both the moral and legal responsibility for the deaths of more than. Iraqis(Iraq Body Count) to 6. Lancet Scientific Journal) to 1,2.
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