DESCRIPTION: During this time in which many of us are still mourning the recent passing of former US Attorney General Ramsey Clark it seems appropriate to reflect on Ramsey’s many warnings to humanity like, ‘The government of Americans will lie, deceive, kill, do whatever it must to dominate – investors in war who control it insanely insensitive to the beauty of life and planet.’
TEXT: During this time in which many of us are still mourning the recent passing of former US Attorney General Ramsey Clark it seems appropriate to reflect on Ramsey’s many warnings to humanity,
‘The government of Americans will lie, deceive, kill, do whatever it must to dominate’
In 1986, former US Attorney General Ramsey Clark described his government, the government of the United States of America, as humanity’s ever more threatening and treacherous enemy and his warning is more valid and scary than ever,
“The consistent underlying psychology of the United States, which has held the lead in nuclear war capability and capacity throughout these 40 [now 75] years, should be understandable to anyone who has ever known a violent neighborhood bully. The government of Americans means to have its way through the use and threatened to use of superior force. It will lie. It will deceive. It will kill. It will escalate the threat and use of force to the highest level it dares. It will bluff, dangerous as that can be. It will do whatever is must to dominate. It does this in the face of the fact that its very preparation for a nuclear war may destroy all life. American war planners busily devised strategies for crippling the Soviet Union with revealing names like BROILER, FROLIC, SIZZLE, SHAKEDOWN, DROPSHOT, and VULTURE. The number of Soviet targets to be destroyed grew in number from 20 cities in December 1945 to 200 cities in 1949 and to 3261 total targets by 1957. The number of times the use of nuclear weapons has been contemplated by Americans is unbearable.
What is to be said of leaders with the mental acuity and moral perceptions revealed by these disclosed words and deeds? They are at best enemies of life without understanding. Psychologically, they disconnect all feeling for the beauty of the planet — a rose, an impala in motion, a baby’s hand, a Confucian analect, a Bach cantata, a parable of Jesus, pilgrims bathing in the Ganges, a crowd watching a soccer game in Rio, the subway in Moscow, the skyline in Manhattan. They cannot think or feel about the human meaning of what they do.
A single Trident II submarine can inflict more death than all prior wars in history. Twenty-four missiles, launched while submerged, each with seventeen independently targeted, maneuverable nuclear warheads five times more powerful than the atom bomb that destroyed Nagasaki, can travel 5,000 nautical miles to strike within 300 feet of 408 predetermined targets. Nuclear winter might follow even if no other weapons are used.
No nation or individual can be permitted to possess the power to destroy the world. An imperative need is for an informed and active public struggling for its right to survive. Public ignorance and apathy is “as much a concern for survival of the specie as the unthinkable power to destroy the world wielded by a few men in a mindless manner”
The above quoted text of warnings from former US Attorney General Ramsey Clark, is excepted from his foreword to theoretical physicist Micho Kaku’s 1986 published, ’To Win a Nuclear War: The Pentagon’s Secret War Plans.’ The authors of this book, both university physicists, document how the nuclear policy of the U.S.A. has not been one of deterrence as publicly stated, but rather has been one of threatening the use of nuclear weapons. Though Kaku’s book was first published in 1986, the frightening policy it described has been widely documented elsewhere over and over again, ever since right up to today.
‘Public ignorance and apathy is a concern for survival of the specie’
Putting Ramsey’s public warning in context, we can note that now, just like before WW I and WW II, humanity is ignoring the race to develop ever more sophisticated weapons of mass destruction, and ignoring the government of the United States of America propagandizing a desperate need for adversarial confrontation, and plausibly, or even probably, world war – but this time, a war of possible apocalyptic finality.
Missing from occasional mild mannered academic sounding televised discussions of assumptions and conjecture about probabilities of nuclear conflict is the brutal reality that humanity is, and has been, constantly suffering the psychopathic criminal insanity of world ruling speculative banking investors in war, whose management tortures the world with profitable genocides and an impoverishment of life for a devilishly exploited near majority of its inhabitants.
These USA and beyond ruling powerful speculative banking investors in war, through their control over public information and education,[see lengthily article: Worldwide Propaganda Network Built by the C.I.A. 12/26/1977, The New York Times [1]] have largely managed to put the consciences of their audience asleep to the ongoing genocidal wars and covert violence Martin Luther King Jr. said were meant to maintain unjust predatory investments on three continents. (Ramsey once showed us his treasured manuscript of King’s ‘Beyond Vietnam – a Time to Break Silence’ sermon given him by King himself.)
“US Foreign Policy is the Greatest Crime Since WWII,” warned Ramsey”
In 1991, Ramsey Clark wrote, “US Foreign Policy is the greatest crime against humanity since the Second World War,” in his book, ‘The Fire This Time – US War Crimes in the Gulf,’[2] in which, Attorney Clark sited specific crimes in dozens of nations bombed and invaded by Americans since WW II.
“American aggression has created incalculable levels of misery for the world”
In 2004, back in Iraq for the crimes of a second President Bush, Clark seems to have spoken again to public ignorance and apathy, as he declared, that
“American aggression had already created incalculable levels of “misery for the world”; that “the poor of the planet made poorer, dominated and exploited by the foreign policies of the U.S. and its rich allies;” that “the U.S. invasion of Iraq was a war of aggression, an offense called ‘the supreme international crime’ in the Nuremberg Judgment.”
“The world is the most dangerous place it’s ever been now because of what our country has done, and is doing”
In January of 2005, Ramsey addressed a protest at the 2nd inauguration of Bush Jr., [3]
The Congress understands something when the people demand it. And the power is in the people. Always has been. The question is whether the people have the will to exercise it. I think that the imperative challenge of the American people now is to live up to the Constitution and demand the impeachment of George W. Bush and the other officials of the government responsible for these crimes. … There has to be accountability for what’s happened.
The world is the most dangerous place it’s ever been now because of what our country has done, and is doing
“U.S. invasion of Iraq ‘the supreme international crime’ in the Nuremberg Judgment.” warned Ramsey There has to be accountability for what’s happened
In June of 2015, former Attorney General Ramsey and an internationally prominent group of lawyers joined an Iraqi mom’s law suit against against Bush, Cheney, and other members of his administration for illegal war in Iraq in violation of international guidelines as defined by the Nuremberg Tribunal after World War II. [4]
Ramsey Clark once remarked to this writer in reference to the positiveness of that lawsuit for reparations and indemnity as opposed to purely anti-war activities,
“Can’t just be against something. Got to be FOR something!”
And he immediately followed up that cautionary with another more specific,
“Without Demands For Compensation For Wrongful Deaths and Destruction, Anti-Imperialist-Wars Journalism Is Hypocritical”
Former US Attorney General Ramsey Clark inspired and endorsed the educational and stimulus website Prosecute US Crimes Against Humanity Now, which contains pertinent laws and a country by country history of US crimes in 19 countries.
Two further often quoted erudite warnings of Ramsey’s seem apropos to mention:
“There are few better measures of the concern a society has for its individual members and its own well being than the way it handles criminals.”
“A great many people in this country are worried about law-and-order. And a great many people are worried about justice. But one thing is certain; you cannot have either until you have both.
Ramsey Clark enhanced thousands of people’s lives immeasurably, both by his example and by his warmth and kindness towards us all. In the opening quote of this article Ramsey gives us an poetic idea of his own “feeling for the beauty of the planet — a rose, an impala in motion, a baby’s hand, a Confucian analect, a Bach cantata, a parable of Jesus, pilgrims bathing in the Ganges, a crowd watching a soccer game in Rio, the subway in Moscow, the skyline in Manhattan.”
It’s for sure that Ramsey Clark will be missed and not forgotten. Whether his warnings about the frightening if not terrifying nature of his country’s past and present government will remembered and heeded in time is an open question.
End Notes
1. Church Committee (the United States Senate Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities) was a U.S. Senate select committee in 1975-6 that investigated abuses by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), National Security Agency (NSA), Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), and the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) chaired by Idaho Senator Frank Church. The committee’s amazingly criminal findings must have caused the publishers of the normally CIA supportive New York Times to feel some obligation to report on its covert criminal activity which the Church Committee had brought to public attention.
2. The Fire This Time: U.S. War Crimes in the Gulf by Ramsey Clark, 1992 Relying on evidence gathered firsthand as well as eyewitness reports, former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark accused the U.S. government and its allies of committing war crimes during their attack on Iraq. Clark also presented evidence that the U.S. provoked the war to gain permanent domination over the Gulf. Amazon Book Review.
3. The Ramsey founded ANSWER Coalition staged a counter inauguration protest at John Marshall Park, speakers took to the stage throughout the day. Among them, former U.S. Attorney General, Ramsey Clark:
RAMSEY CLARK: Really to support and defend the Constitution of the United States. We have to take the Constitution back, back from crimes against peace, from war crimes and crimes against humanity.
You know, the Nuremberg tribunal called the war of aggression the supreme international crime, and it is. And George W. Bush has waged a war of aggression against Iraq. He’s killed more than 100,000 people. Are their lives worth nothing? Can we have a moment of silence in memory of all the people who have died in Iraq because of the criminal acts of George W. Bush in waging this war of aggression?
Every moment of their lives is fraught with danger right now because of us. The world is the most dangerous place it’s ever been now because of what our country has done, and is doing, and we have to take it back. We can’t wait four more years.
There can’t be any more Fallujahs. Fallujah is the 21st century equivalent of Guernica. We just went in and destroyed that city, drove the people out, killed them, thousands. We don’t know how many. They won’t even bother to count who’s been killed or how many, or estimate how many. They just keep killing. Almost every day we’re reading about another checkpoint where some family got wiped out because they didn’t do what they were supposed to do, according to the military there.
Abu Ghraib is unbelievable in the innocent times of 1961, that we would torture people that way, and on the instructions of the president of the United States and his highest legal advisers. “Torture is OK,” they said. “Go for it, fellas.” If we can’t renounce that and remove it from office, then the Constitution doesn’t work anymore.
We’ve got to do more than take back the Constitution. There has to be accountability for what’s happened. The Constitution says that the president, vice president and other officials of the United States shall be removed from office upon impeachment for and conviction of high crimes and misdemeanors.
If you care about the Constitution, you better start talking to your member of the House of Representatives and say impeachment now is essential to the integrity of the United States government and to the future of the United States. We’ve had more than 500,000 people sign on “Vote to Impeach.” We need to get 5 million, and we need to get 5 million on there quick. And then the Congress will react.
The Congress understands something when the people demand it. And the power is in the people. Always has been. The question is whether the people have the will to exercise it. I think that the imperative challenge of the American people now is to live up to the Constitution and demand the impeachment of George W. Bush and the other officials of the government responsible for these crimes. Thank you very much.
4. ‘Former US Attorney General Ramsey Clark Joins Lawsuit against Bush, Cheney, Et Al for Illegal War in Iraq’ By Claire Bernish, Global Research, June 18, 2015, Obama DOJ Asks Court to Grant Immunity to George W. Bush For Iraq War
Jay Janson is an archival research peoples historian activist, musician and writer; has lived and worked on all continents in 67 countries; articles on media published in China, Italy, UK, India, Sweden and the US; now resides in NYC; First effort was a series of articles on deadly cultural pollution endangering seven areas of life emanating from Western corporate owned commercial media published in Hong Kong’s Window Magazine 1993; Howard Zinn lent his name to various projects of his; Greanville Post; Global Research; Information Clearing House; Counter Currents, Kerala, India; Minority Perspective, UK; Einartysken, Sweden: Saker Vineyard, Germany; Dissident Voice; Ta Kung Pao; Uruknet; Voice of Detroit; Mathaba; Ethiopian Review; Palestine Chronicle; India Times; MalaysiaSun; China Daily; South China Morning Post; Come Home America; CubaNews; TurkishNews; HistoryNews Network; Vermont Citizen News have published his articles; 300 of which are available at: click http://www.opednews.com/author/author1723.html ; Weekly column, South China Morning Post, 1986-87; reviews for Ta Kung Bao; article China Daily, 1989. Is coordinator of the Howard Zinn co-founded King Condemned US Wars International Awareness Campaign: (King Condemned US Wars) http://kingcondemneduswars.blogspot.com/ and website historian of the Ramsey Clark co-founded Prosecute US Crimes Against Humanity Now Campaign http://prosecuteuscrimesagainsthumanitynow.blogspot.com/ featuring a country by country history of US crimes and laws pertaining.
