Ray tried, through his piece, to sanitise US aggression and military acts of brutality by placing the blame for unjust wars on politicians "who rarely have to face the consequences of battle up close", and he tried to mobilise sympathy and mercy for the innocent and troubled soldiers sent to execute the evil plans of politicians.

Manheru rightly noted that what Ray wrote about is ground that has been extensively covered by numerous other writers before, and in this regard no readers should be misled into believing that the US envoy has something to do with discovering new things.

The only fascinating part of Ray’s piece is its amoral effort to sanitise unjust and evil wars that are a large part of the history of the US, his country by ancestral slavery.

In 2006, James Traub wrote in the New York Times Magazine: "Of course, treaties and norms don’t restrain the outlaws. The prohibition on the territorial aggression enshrined in the UN Charter didn’t faze Saddam Hussein when he decided to forcibly annex Kuwait."

He added: "When it comes to military force, the United States can, and will, act alone. But diplomacy depends on a united front."

In reality what Traub was saying is that the US does not need any laws or restraining opinion when it comes to military action.

The superpower acts alone and only respects international law on matters of diplomacy.

Traub knows very well that the US is a leading outlaw state, a leading terrorist state, and that the Pentagon is the biggest terrorist organisation on this planet, totally unconstrained by international law, and proudly and openly so.

He did not say that in his essay because if he did that, he would not be writing for the New York Times.

One cannot trespass from the dictates of a certain level of discipline to be met in being part of that establishment.

Noam Chomsky wrote in the book "What We Say Goes" and he said, "In a well-run society, you don’t say things you know. You say things that are required for service to power".

Clearly Charles Ray, just like James Traub, is quite educated on what to say about US brutality and aggression.

You criticise the execution and planning of a war if you must; but you cannot criticise the war itself.

It is public knowledge that the United States invaded Iraq, even though that was a radical violation of the United Nations Charter.

It is the duty of writers like Charles Ray and James Traub to glamorise and sanitise such violations, and changing the context of events is one common way of doing so.

This is why Charles Ray wrote about an innocent and troubled soldier fighting in an unjust war the same time Zimbabwe was celebrating the heroes of its liberation struggle.

Such glory as attributed to liberation fighters must be juxtaposed against the exploits of troubled soldiers at the service of the empire.

The United States is absolutely notorious for covering its evil by loudly pointing at lesser evils from others and even advocating justice to victims of tyranny and dictatorships — zealously doing it ahead of all others.

It is like the often told story of Emperor Alexander and the pirate. The account from Saint Augustine has it that a pirate was brought to Alexander, who then asked him; "How dare you molest the seas with your piracy?"

The pirate answered: "How dare you molest the whole world? I have a small ship, so they call me a pirate. You have a great navy, so they call you an emperor. But you are molesting the world. I am doing almost nothing by comparison". (Quotes are the writer’s emphasis).

This is the way it works in Western political lexicon. The emperor is allowed to molest the world, but the pirate is considered a major criminal. It is always the typical case of a pea standing next to the mountain.

Wouldn’t Osama bin Laden say the same things said by the pirate if he were brought before Barrack Obama today? Is that not the feeling of every member of the listed ‘‘terror’’ groups that the US wants the world to fear so much, Hamas included?

Obama says he is heartbroken over alleged human rights abuses in Zimbabwe, and he carries such a broken heart while boasting of the US’ resolve to keep occupying both Iraq and Afghanistan — molesting and murdering millions of innocent civilians in the process.

This Emperor Alexander of our day speaks proudly of slamming Zimbabwe with illegal economic sanctions from one corner of his mouth, and tells the world that he is heartbroken over the same Zimbabwe from the other corner.

Indeed the world is supposed to applaud. Having heartbreaks over one’s own destructive works must be plausible.

In January 2006, 18 Pakistani civilians were killed in a US missile attack on Pakistan. The New York Times commented in an editorial that "Those strikes were legitimately aimed at top fugitive leaders of Al Qaeda".

The message here is very clear. The New York Times is in agreement with the military actions of the United States, however egregious. To them the United States is a legitimate outlaw state that should be readily accepted by all others.

On May 7 2009, Hillary Clinton was reported by the BBC as having apologised for the death of hundreds of innocent Afghan civilians who were brutally murdered by US indiscriminate air strikes on villages suspected of harbouring the Taliban.

The apology came after the Red Cross confirmed the deaths of hundreds of civilians covered in shallow mass graves in the province of Farah and all Clinton said was that Washington "deeply regrets" the loss of innocent lives.

According to a survivor of the brutal attack, Sayed Azam; 50 members of his extended family died from the bombings that evening, Reuters reported.

The regret from Clinton should suffice to atone for the death of these lesser peoples.

That is not surprising.

The United States has the right to use violence where it chooses, no matter what happens.

If the wrong people are killed in the process, it is enough for the US to simply say "Sorry, we hit the wrong people".

There should never be limits on the right of the US to use force. On that the US acts alone and all others must follow or risk being "irrelevant".

Western liberal media like The Times and the Rupert Murdoch owned media are sometimes vocal about domestic law in their own backyards and they have sometimes voiced a lot of concern about surveillance and the invasion of privacy resulting from anti-terror laws.

However, this concern does not really extend much to the international arena, and this is not without cause.

The only time Western liberal media show their unrivalled dedication to international law is when that law is broken by non-Western countries and perceived enemies. Some have called this a double standard but in reality it is not.

It is a single standard and the policy is strictly consistent. It is an unquestionable loyalty and subordination to power. The standard says there is an issue when Big Brother is eavesdropping or reading emails of all others, and that is quite annoying on the domestic front.

But when there is this gross violation of international law; what the Nuremburg Tribunal called "the supreme international crime — that contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole" — such violation as was the invasion of Iraq, then that is just fine.

It is unacceptably barbaric when the violation is by Saddam Hussein invading Kuwait, but acceptably understandable when the violation is by George W. Bush invading Iraq.

In such scenarios you sympathise more with the troubled soldier executing the evil plans of the politicians, and Charles Ray did not only write about this in a Zimbabwean newspaper, but indeed personally executed one such evil plan when he participated in the US aggression on Vietnam between 1968 and 1973. For the trouble he went through, he whole heartedly expects a lot of sympathy from the whole world, that with no sense of irony.

Howard Friel and Richard Falk looked at the attitude of the New York Times towards international law in their book "Record of the Paper", and what they found pretty much applies to most of the Western Press.

They found out that if an enemy can be accused of violating international law, it is always a huge outrage. But when the US does any similar or worse violation, it is as if it did not happen.

Friel and Falk pointed out that in the 70 editorials on the invasion of Iraq from September 11, 2011, to March 21, 2003, the words "UN Charter" and "international law" never appeared even once.

That is understandably typical of a newspaper that believes the United States should be an outlaw state.

Members of the peace movement, Martin Luther King Jr included, talked a lot about stopping the US from engaging in unjust wars and sometimes they described plain aggression as "war".

Was the US really at war when they invaded Grenada in 1982, or in 1967 when they were killing Vietnamese people? It is an odd sense of being at war.

The US was just attacking other countries, and it had not been attacked by anybody.

Iraq was the same, Afghanistan was the same, Laos in 1957, and many other places far too many to mention.

What part of a plain act of aggression constitutes a war?

What the US does is brazen violation of international law in aggressively invading smaller states in the name of war. The biggest problem in combating US aggression is the civil obedience of US citizens.

These people are made to take orders without questioning, and to accept unjust wars as unavoidable.

US state power is the most egregious in the world, and sometimes it just appears like it is futile to stand in its way.

There have been successful models in confronting US power in the past, from the civil rights movement in the 60s to the peace movement in the 70s.

These are occasions when state power fails to manufacture consent among the people.

The US does not only seek to create civil obedience among its own citizens.

It seeks to do so in its client states, and in fact they want more civil obedience in other countries than they do in their own back yard.

This is why they want all Zimbabweans to loath President Mugabe on their behalf, and that is why it is now considered a crime of sorts in the West to be a member of Zanu-PF.

One is sanctioned and barred from travelling to Western countries for being legitimately elected to a leadership position through a Zanu-PF ticket — for being elected by Zimbabweans as a Zimbabwean leader.

The US and its Western allies will say no to that; insisting that "progressive" Zimbabweans will only elect leaders from the highly treacherous, insidious and puppet MDC-T party.

The British Sports Minister believes his country has every right to tell Zimbabweans who should lead their cricket, and he openly says his country views the Zimbabwe Cricket chairman Peter Chingoka as a criminal.

We have seen this kind of political aggression elsewhere in recent times.

Bolivia and Haiti have recently had democratic elections of a kind no Western country can even conceive.

In December 2005, the people of Bolivia elected Evo Morales ahead of two rich and powerful Western-backed candidates trained in the US.

The people of Bolivia just ignored Western rhetoric about the democratic credentials of the two puppets and instead chose someone from their own ranks.

That is real democracy, and we saw that happening in Palestine when Hamas was elected in 2006.

In Haiti, if Jean-Bertrand Aristide had not been forcibly expelled from the Caribbean by the US in early 2004, it is very likely he would have won re-election.

In the West, there is not much of meaningful participation by the people in the democratic process.

There is real obedience to corporate power.

You do not get this Bolivian kind of disobedience that is needed to create a truly functioning democracy.

The resolve by the US to manufacture consent at home and abroad is what is driving US foreign policy today.

It is the underlying factor behind the now traditional gross violations of international law by US elites and their allies from other Western countries.

So the US, Canada and Australia have the temerity to use international law in justifying their minority racially composed opposition to Zimbabwe’s right to sell its diamonds through the Kimberly Process.

Canada even unashamedly tried to redefine the law just to contrive a crime against Zimbabwe.

When an outlaw state like the US preaches human rights it is like the Devil preaching righteousness.

It is simply appalling.

When progressive countries overwhelmingly stand against US excesses as happened with Zimbabwe’s Diamond case at Kimberly, we begin to believe that US aggression is after all not insurmountable.

Zimbabwe we are one and together we will overcome. It is homeland or death!!

Reason Wafawarova is a political writer based in Sydney, Australia and can be contacted on wafawarova@ yahoo.co.uk or reason@rwafawarova.com or visit www. rwafawarova.com

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