Making America Safe ... for Dictatorship

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" Magginkat " <magginkat

Wed, 2 Aug 2006 13:15:44 -0500

[GranniesAgainstGeorge] Making America Safe ... for Dictatorship

 

 

 

 

And They Threw It All Away

Making America Safe ... for Dictatorship

 

By DAVE LINDORFF http://www.counterpunch.org/lindorff08012006.html

 

 

As is often the case, John Stewart, in making a joke on Comedy

Central's " The Daily Show, " managed to capture the truth that the news

media are missing.

 

In this case it was an interview with Senator John McCain (R-AZ).

While Sen. McCain, now a staunch Bush backer, was talking about steps

the government was allegedly taking to protect the homeland, Stewart

interjected, " How much safer can we afford to be, Senator? "

 

In fact, the reality seems to be that for five years since the 9-11

attacks, the Bush administration has been putting the U.S.

increasingly at risk.

 

The attack on Al Qaeda, which morphed into a full-scale war of " regime

change " in the country of Afghanistan, and which ended up dropping its

purported raison d'etre--the capture or killing of Osama bin

Ladin--was a fraud and a sideshow from the outset. The country was

ravaged by aerial attacks, and then the same warlords who had been

pillaging and terrorizing that country for years, and running a

massive opium operation, were left in power or even aided in assuming

power. Bin Ladin was allowed to escape, and the ousted Taliban

organization was allowed to reorganize and rebuild its forces.

 

The invasion of Iraq, on manifestly false grounds, has destroyed a

country and left it exactly the kind of " failed state " that

Afghanistan was said to have been in 2001--a lawless and violent

region open to all kinds of terrorist activities that can be directed

against the U.S. and against Americans.

 

The blank check and unlimited provision of weapons of war, including

cluster bombs and phosphorus bombs, by the U.S. to Israel in its

ruthless, bloody invasion of Lebanon, has linked America and Americans

to the criminal slaughter of hundreds of innocent Lebanese, including

children and babies, as has the Bush administration's obstruction of

efforts to engineer a cease-fire in that conflict.

 

Indeed, Bush foreign policy seems over this period to have been

calculated to alienate as many countries and people as possible. It is

a policy characterized by supreme arrogance, a focus on military

activity over negotiation, and support of dictators large and small,

while at the same time conducting what from the start was

characterized as a " crusade " against Islam.

 

At home, the strategy has been to bankrupt local communities by

cutting federal support for everything from police and fire

departments to roads and schools, while failing to fund the most basic

elements of national defense--port facilities, airports--and refusing

to insist on safety reforms at vulnerable facilities like refineries

and chemical plants. (The National Guard, which was conceived and

established as a kind of lineal descendant of the colonial era

militias, has been shipped off to fight in Iraq, leaving the country

largely undefended, whether against natural disaster or foreign attack.)

 

Meanwhile, the public and Congress-and especially a congenitally

spineless Democratic " opposition " --have been cowed into frightened

silence by the administration's initiation of what it calls a " war on

terror, " a permanent state of " war " that it has used as a

justification for canceling or weakening traditional Constitutionally

protected liberties and rights, and for intimidating would-be

political opponents from speaking out, for fear of their being called

unpatriotic or even treasonous. The American public, uniquely united

after 9-11, has been sharply divided into bitter warring camps--those

who support the administration and its many wars, and those who oppose it.

 

If some diabolical anti-American mastermind had been trying, behind

the scenes, to destroy this nation by secretly installing in the White

House and Pentagon agents who would deliberately sink the ship of

state, he or she couldn't have come up with a subversive wrecking crew

more adept at the job than the Bush administration. The nation is

being bankrupted by tax cuts for the obscenely wealthy and by a

pointless, and endless trillion-dollar war. At the same time blood

enemies are being produced with every bomb dropped, every innocent

victim kidnapped and locked away in America's gulag, every child shot

at a roadblock.

 

Clearly, though, Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice et al, are not the

secret agents of some malevolent foreign enemy of America. Nor is

their vile reign of terror around the globe and their gutting of the

Constitution here at home, simply a matter of stupid policy-making.

They are, rather, home-grown enemies of American democracy, bent on

subverting the country to their own ends of unbridled power.

 

Their goal in all this is not the stated one of " spreading democracy "

at the point of a gun--a clearly ridiculous notion in any case.

Rather, the goal is destroying democracy here at home, in order to

establish a one-party dictatorship.

 

From this perspective, it is clear that far from trying to " protect

the homeland, " the Bush administration is happy to weaken American

defenses, as it has been doing, and to manufacture enemies--whether

states like Iran and Syria, or stateless organizations like Al Qaeda

and Hezzbolah. The more the better. Far from trying to prevent another

9-11, one senses that this administration would like nothing better

than for there to be another strike against Americans before the

coming congressional elections--a second " new Pearl Harbor " as it

were--to justify a full-scale crackdown on dissent, opposition, and

independent thought.

 

George Orwell long ago imagined a world deliberately kept in a

perpetual state of war, where the citizenry would accept totalitarian

rule in the name of patriotism and security. We are now entering such

a state. The yellow " support the troops " ribbons mindlessly pasted on

the trunks and rear doors of half the cars, vans and SUVs in America

are testimony to a sheep-like acceptance of the official

administration line that war is good and in America's interest. I saw

one such ribbon today that was particularly credulous. It read:

" Remember 9-11. Support our Troops. " This despite the fact that our

troops are not fighting anyone who remotely had anything to do with 9-11.

 

We are not far from that Orwellian condition.

 

The answer to John Stewart's question is clear: We can't afford to be

any " safer. "