OBAMA WRONG IN SELECTING HILLARY CLINTON AS SEC. OF STATE

How did Barack Obama pick Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State?

Obama says he wants to use diplomacy and negotiation with all countries, especially those the Bush/Cheney gang tried to portray as enemies of the United States. That obviously means Iran.

But if Obama wants to cool tensions with Iran and begin a new phase of diplomacy and peaceful existence, how will Hillary Clinton fit in? Remember she is the one who threatened to "obliterate" Iran in the event of an Iranian nuclear attack.

Clinton's "obliterate" comment was not helpful. If you were an average Iranian, what would you think of it? Certainly you would have visions of Iranian cities going up in flames much the same as Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Thousands if not millions of men, women and children annihilated. Cities destroyed and left in ruins like Hamburg and Dresden.

So my question remains, what was Obama thinking in naming someone who has been so intemperate and reckless in her words the chief U.S. diplomat?

SHOULD GOD DAMN AMERICA FOR WAR CRIMES?

Howard Kurz takes a shot at both Barack Obama and Jeremiah Wright in his column today in The Washington Post. Kurz objects to Wright's, "God Damn America," notwithstanding the American bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki that led to Japan's unconditional surrender at the end of WWII.

Here's Kurz:

"As for context, Moyers played a long clip from the post-9/11 "America's chickens are coming home to roost" sermon. Wright said that America had taken its land by terror from the Indians; had enslaved Africans; had bombed Hiroshima and Nagasaki (weren't we in a death struggle with Japan, which had attacked Pearl Harbor?); had bombed Iraq, Sudan and Panama; and had backed state-supported terrorism against the Palestinians.

"Moyers's question after this diatribe: "When people saw the sound bites from it this year, they thought you were blaming America. Did you somehow fail to communicate?"

"Thought he was blaming America? Where did anyone get that idea? "

I guess Howard Kurz thinks that America should never be blamed. Not even for Hiroshima and Nakasaki, where, in each city, over 100,000 innocent men, women and children were either incinerated or poisoned with lethal nuclear radioactive materials. Kurz seems to believe the destruction of the two Japanese cities was justified:

" . . . (weren't we in a death struggle with Japan, which had attacked Pearl Harbor?)"

Should God bless America for this, or should as Wright says, should God damn America? Let's admit it. What the United States did to Japanese people when it dropped the nuclear devices was a WAR CRIME. Nothing less. It will do no good morally or ethically for Howard Kurz or other defenders of "American exceptionalism" to claim that the bombing saved the lives of American troops. President Harry S. Truman was a war criminal. So were the crew of the Enola Gay that dropped the bombs. The rules of war make that perfectly clear. The end does not justify the means, not in Hiroshima, not in Hamburg or Dresden, not in the "War on Terror.

U.S. FIRES MISSILES INTO PAKISTAN VILLAGE, KILLS AT LEAST 16

We get reports today that the U.S. has fired several missiles into some village in South Waziristan, killing at least 16 people. The question is, how many of these killed were children? How many were women? How many were unsuspecting civilians just going about their daily lives?

The BBC reports:

"At least 16 people have been killed in a missile strike on a building near Pakistan's northern border with Afghanistan, state television has said. The attack took place in the South Waziristan region, where tribal militants are based, Reuters news agency reported residents as saying. The Pakistani state TV report said several missiles destroyed the house of a suspected militant leader. . . ."

The BBC reports that the Pakistan military says at least nine were civilians. It quotes Reuters:

"Reuters reported the military saying seven militants were among the dead.

""Initial reports suggest militants were hiding there and seven of them were killed and several wounded," an unnamed military official told the news agency."

This seems to be the modus operandi of Bush and his U.S. military. Shoot missiles, drop bombs and send in war planes. The heck with how many civilians die.

This raid is illegal on at least two counts.

First, under international law, the United States is not allowed to strike another country or violate another country's sovereignty. Firing a missile into some rural village in Pakistan clearly clearly violates this law.

Second. Under the Geneva Convention, the U.S. is not allowed to directly kill civilians in its attempt to kill militants. Here shooting a missile into someone's home is bound to kill civilians, especially children. This is just as illegal and immoral as the U.S. carpet-bombing Dresden in 1945, killing over 100,000 civilians.

No wonder the people in South Waziristan as well as most other people throughout the world detest the United States and its militaristic foreign policy.

ISRAEL INFLICTS COLLECTIVE PUNISHMENT ON PEOPLE OF GAZA - THIS IS A WAR CRIME

The news reports out of Gaza are dreadful. Israel is inflicting collective punishment against the whole population as a means to retaliate against the few who are shooting rockets from Gaza into Israel.

I thought we condemned the Nazis during the second World War for inflicting collective punishment on cities and villages where German soldiers were killed. The Nazis inflicted penalties of up to 100 for one. One German soldier's death required 100 civilians to be hanged. The Allies were no different or no less guilty of barbaric collective punishment. Consider the fire bombing of Dresden by British and American war planes. More than 40,000 German civilians killed during the span of one night as the whole city was destroyed. This too was collective punishment. And a war crime.

Now it seems to be Israel's turn to engage in this horrendous practice. Punish the whole population by stopping all shipments of food and gasoline into Gaza. Let the people suffer from lack of medicine and electricity. Cause huge bread lines and periods of power outage. Continue with such wholesale punishment until the rockets stop.