The Bush Disaster of 911 and the decimation of American Civil liberties. This will be the most difficult of posts on this website. I will post it as I am editing, This post will be difficult for many to read and will challenge some closely held perceptions.
First let me start that I no longer care about the events of that day, September 11 2001 the way I did before. I no longer define my life and reactions to danger and the hatred of others through the lens of those falling buildings. Although I was (and still am) horrified by the loss of life, the events themselves on that morning in perspective were not relevant to the survival of the US political and economic system. The hubris, mistakes and our disastrous foreign policy are relevant in the lead-up to this horror are in my view. What is nearly as immoral as the act itself is that this tragedy was skillfully converted into theater for the purpose of public intimidation and control. Cheney, Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz these “power engineers”, their think tank partners and most importantly the military industrial complex played this tragedy to the fullest to their own ends. The one thing they will not tell you is that in some ways this blowback was inevitable. When a country such as ours commits atrocities upon other people in foreign lands that are unspeakable, we should not be surprised that there is are horrible violent reaction. What has surprised me is that this “blowback” happens infrequently, which for us is rather more by luck than by design. Overall, oppressed peoples energies are better aimed at their own rulers that abuse their natural rights. And the people of the west need to take a long look the history of their own nations interactions and use what limited political power stills remains in their hands to rein in their respective military complexes. In the broad sense no objection can be raised to free nations and peoples trading their respective goods and services with other people for the benefit of all. What I object to is the persistent pattern of empires large and small using the military to enforce “arrangements” that benefit those with their hands on the levers of power at the cost of the lives and security of those whom are standing in the way of private profit. Of course the US is not innocent in this regard. Our history is replete with countless incidents both large and small which illustrate our greed and carelessness about the people of other nations. When these people object to our grand design we used to call them “communist” now we call them “terrorist”.
Instead of finding out why these people react this way, instead of looking at the mirror and asking the hard questions, we step up the military response throwing fuel on the fire and exacerbating the situation. The latest recklessness in the name of national security, we have degraded civil rights internally and have become a police state. We now as a country do things to prisoners without formal charges that two generations before we hung Japanese and German war criminals for. The US has moved far to the darkness of fascism. Instead of teaching the young history and how to be a civilized members of society we give them “Call to Duty” an admittedly high quality video game that is of the type the US military uses to desensitize recruits. Desensitize what a nice neutral word. What it means it makes our kids deal with killing the this years enemy easier. In an ultimate irony the miltiary teaches our young how to kill, and when those same kids break down emotionaly because of what they have seen and done they are cast aside as garbage. Makes me proud to be an American.
This is not new, we as a country have a nasty habit of giving up very quickly what we supposedly hold so dear. And another nasty habit of demonizing those internally or externally who do agree with government policy. For those that do not read history, Abraham Lincoln suspended habeas corpus. Woodrow Wilson had the alien and sedition act. During the 1st World War It was illegal to speak out against American involvement in the war. Good people went to jail rather than be drafted and other good people were jailed writing about the horrors of that conflict. In the second World War Japanese Americans on the west coast were rounded up like cattle and sent to concentration camps. Families lost their savings, property and dignity. And worse the Supreme Court declared it legal. This tradition of trashing individual rights in the name of so called “National Security” continues today. The fourth amendment tragically is meaningless. Journalists and filmmakers returning from overseas are routinely harassed by the Dept of Homeland Security. Here is an article about one such person here singleton That bastion of evil “Homeland Security” (there’s is an agency who’s name sounded better in the original German) another horrible spinoff of the disastrous Bush Cabal, I only hope we can legally kill it before it’s too late. Because of the Supreme Courts absolute utter failure to protect the rights of the individual words cannot express in an adequate way my complete and utter loathing and contempt of that branch of government. My disdain is not just because of just one event. The modern court has shown time and again it’s utter contempt for the individual. As few more examples such as the judicial coup known as the 2000 presidential election granting victory to George Bush Jr ( In our house nicknamed “the criminal idiot”) perhaps the very worst president in the history of the country. A man with no sense of history and utterly unqualified for the position. Although many other presidents and party’s contributed to the decline of the US, George Herbert Walker Bush stands out above the others. There is a fabulous web site dedicated to his infamy here www.smirkingchimp.com
The wholesale trashing of the rule of law and civil liberties is a low point of the last 50 years only exceeded by the murder of the Kennedy brothers. Jack I believe killed by a cabal of intelligence community operatives and the military. The best book on the subject I have read is James W Douglass’s JFK and the unspeakable. The younger brother, Jack’s most trusted confidant Bobby by mysterious means still not resolved. I believe that the coup instigated by the military industrial cabal in 1963 was the end of the American experiment. Our elections are meaningless. The Democratic party is but a weak broth of the former fomenting stew of new ideas. The Democratic party is completly bereft of legitimacy. It no longer represents the interests of the working class. Even worse the republicans are not even recognizable from their honorable roots in the 1860′s, when the party was against slavery. Now the party is merely a paid front for the Koch brothers and that ilk. The republicans have move so far to the right that they are on the verge of becoming irrelevant. Only through the machinations of Karl Rove (who should be in jail for so many reasons) and voter suppression are they in our view even in the game. It to me is funny as hell that the right screeches about “Voter Fraud” when they are really the experts at keeping people of color, the elderly and students away from the polls. What’s wrong guys afraid of a fair fight? Or do you really know your ideas can only be thrust upon the people by fraud? Or do you think continual lies on right wing radio will carry the day for you. We will see. The downdraft is accelerating perhaps in the overreach of the right the common man will see that the interests of the 1 percent are not exactly in line with his. One can hope. A fascinating if somewhat lengthy interview with Mr Hedges is below, well worth the time.