Is "American Exceptionalism" Really Just a Nice Way to Say

we're run by exceptionally evil fuckers?


UPDATE: "The quaint and obsolete Nuremberg principles" by Glenn Greenwald shows our exceptional evil:

To much controversy, Noam Chomsky recently wrote: "uncontroversially, Bush's crimes vastly exceed bin Laden's." That claim prompted widespread objections, including from Andrew Sullivan, who specifically criticized Chomsky's use of the word "uncontroversially" in making that claim. That semantic objection is not invalid: of course that comparative judgment is controversial, especially in the U.S.

Nor do I think such comparisons are ultimately worthwhile: how does one weigh the intentional targeting of civilians that kills several thousand against an illegal, aggressive war that recklessly and foreseeably causes the deaths of at least 100,000 innocent people, and almost certainly far more? Comparisons aside: what is clear is that Bush's crimes are grave, of historic proportion, and it's simply impossible for anyone who believes in the Nuremberg Principles to deny that.

His invasion of Iraq caused the deaths of at least 100,000 (and almost certainly more) innocent Iraqis: vastly more than bin Laden could have dreamed of causing. It left millions of people internally and externally displaced for years. It destroyed a nation of 26 million people. It was without question an illegal war of aggression: what the lead prosecutor of the Nuremberg Trials -- as Ferencz just reminded us -- called the "the central crime in this pattern of crimes, the kingpin which holds them all together." And that's to say nothing of the worldwide regime of torture, disappearances, and black sites created by the U.S during the Bush years.

Yet the very same country -- and often the very same people -- collectively insisting upon the imperative of punishing civilian deaths (in the bin Laden case) has banded together to shield George Bush from any accountability of any kind. Both political parties -- and the current President -- have invented entirely new Orwellian slogans of pure lawlessness to justify this protection (Look Forward, Not Backward): one that selectively operates to protect only high-level U.S. war criminals but not those who expose their crimes. Worse, many of Bush's most egregious crimes -- including the false pretenses that led to this unfathomably lethal aggressive war and the widespread abuse of prisoners that accompanied it -- were well known to the country when it re-elected him in 2004.

Also these crimes by both the US and Israel.