patched together enough equipment and broken antennae to get a distress call off to the Sixth Fleet, despite intense jamming by the Israelis. "Any station, this is Rockstar," [radioman] Halman shouted, using the Liberty's voice call sign. "We are under attack by unidentified jet aircraft and require immediate assistance."
"Great, wonderful, she's burning, she's burning," said an Israeli pilot.
But, hey, the Sixth Fleet had the message. We all know what
happened next. Seen it in every movie. The cavalry was on the way. You can hear
the order to American pilots: “Splash the bastards.”
Er, no. Wrong movie. (Try Exodus.) What actually happened was that the Secretary of Defense
(Robert McNamara) and the President of the United States (Lyndon Johnson) twice
recalled the American planes that were launched from nearby
carriers to defend the ship.
That’s right, twice. When the Sixth Fleet carrier division commander resisted the Secretary of Defense—because, you know, RUFKM!—and demanded confirmation of the recall order, he was shocked to hear President Johnson come on the line personally, to say that he “didn't care if the ship sunk, he would not embarrass his allies."
[And let's not pretend the plural is relevant here: there
is no other "ally" that would have been granted the
right to sink an American ship]
Never heard of this incident? Think about that for a second.
No, five seconds. Give it some thought. Did you hear about it once upon a
time somewhere, but it was treated as insignificant, and never heard of again?
I bet you’ve heard endlessly, and know all about, John McCain’s POW experience
at the hands of the Vietnamese? (His father presided
over the cover-up of the Liberty incident, by the way.) I wonder how this
will be treated in Brian Cranston's LBJ biopic. All The Way, LBJ
went with Israel.
Why no Hollywood movie, ever, about this great story of
military heroism? Isn’t it a natural, with the grizzled survivors appearing in cameos
and all? What’s remembered and reported, and what’s forgotten and dismissed,
and why, and under whose orders?
When you hear the great patriotic paeans to America from our
President and presidential candidates, ask what they have to say about what happened
forty-nine years ago today, whether they think it was OK for the President to
accept—to order, in a real sense—208 American causalities so
as not to embarrass Israel. And ask yourself why there is never peep one about
this from any of our flag-pin-wearing American leaders or our free of
critical thought media. Where, exactly, do they rank American lives on
their scale of whom to protect?
What else is there that we might not be being told, today,
about American lives jeopardized for Israel? Think the Iraq war, the destruction
of the Iraqi state, and the Libyan state, and the ongoing attempt to destroy
the Syrian state are “senseless”? Can our American school-and-media-built
thought radar detect nobody who wanted, and benefitted from,
the destruction of three states in the region that were militarily strong,
socially-advanced, secular, and defiantly supportive of Palestine resistance? The Middle East is burning. Great,
wonderful.
Remembering the Liberty is not just an exercise to boil your
blood about what happened forty-nine years ago (and reading the links below
will do that). Remembering the Liberty is necessary to understand what’s
happening to us now, and what will happen in the future, if we obey the orders
of President Trump or Clinton—either of whom will go all the way with Israel,
and to protect it, will sink our ship.
There is no more urgent task—none—for
progressive-minded Americans than to end American involvement in Israeli
colonialism, which might start by ending Israeli impunity for the murder of
Americans.
Links and References
USS Liberty: Dead in the Water (BBC Documentary)
The Day Israel Attacked America (2014 Al-Jazeera Documentary)
Related posts:
"I feel a lot of horror": Remember Rachel Corrie
Apology Excepted: Obama’s Turkish Twist
The Day Israel Attacked America (2014 Al-Jazeera Documentary)
Related posts:
"I feel a lot of horror": Remember Rachel Corrie
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