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America on its Knees Before
Tyranny
By
Richard Mynick
03/02/07 "ICH"
-- -- "The Star-Spangled Banner" painted the United
States in 1814 as "The Land of the Free and the Home of the
Brave." These words, though still mumbled by apathetic
consumers at sporting events, amount to a cruel satire of the
American people in 2007.
The 4th sentence of the Declaration of Independence reads
"...That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of
these ends (ie, Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness) it
is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to
institute new Government..." It would be hard to find a more
apt description of the US government in 2007, or a more
appropriate remedy for this oppressive regime, increasingly
loathed and feared by the citizenry.
We have a Constitution which defines a separation of powers. It
also defines procedures for impeaching officials who violate its
bedrock principles -- in particular, its Bill of Rights, its
separation of powers, and its foundational notion that power
derives from the consent of the governed. We make elected
officials swear an oath to "protect and defend" this
Constitution. Why bother with all this, if, when the day of
tyranny finally arrives, the Constitution's own provisions are
not used to defend the document's principles against the
would-be tyrants who have so egregiously violated them?
In November, US voters told Washington that the public does not
support the war; sees with increasing clarity that it is immoral
and was launched on false pretexts; and wants it terminated. In
response, Vice-Emperor Cheney snarled in a TV interview with an
obsequious Bush toady that regardless of what the public or
Congress might say about it, the White House intends not only to
continue the war, but to escalate it.
Let's examine this extraordinary position. Here is a top
official of a "democracy" -- in a war marketed as an effort to
"spread democracy" -- stating publicly & with imperial scorn
that he and his co-conspirators have the right to order the US
war machine to bombard and occupy any nation they wish to
target, even if their war is launched under demonstrably false
pretexts. They claim the right to compel the public to furnish
lives and bodies to be killed and maimed in the war, and to bear
the moral and financial burdens of the war, in an action which
not incidentally lets administration allies in the "defense" and
oil industries profit handsomely from the ensuing mayhem.
Needless to say, from Cheney's viewpoint, it's also of no moment
that the war violates the Nuremberg Principles and UN Charter
forbidding aggressive war, and that the conduct of the war
violates international accords to which the US is a signatory.
If that position does not constitute tyranny and abuse of power,
what would? The "long train of abuses and usurpations" cited
against King George in the Declaration of Independence was no
worse an abuse of power than this. And nothing Britain ever did
to its American colonies came anywhere near the monstrous
outrages perpetrated by the US on modern-day Iraq.
The war in Iraq is not merely "the most serious foreign policy
blunder in American history," as even members of the political
establishment have conceded. It represents, rather, a crisis
derived from the decaying framework of the US political system,
posing the most fundamental question about the relationship
between the rulers and ruled in this country. Though the Bush
regime led the way, the war is the joint product of both parties
and the corporate media -- that is, of the entire political
establishment -- with each part playing its own supporting role.
It's not a question of "Well, if only Gore had won in 2000, we
wouldn't be in this mess." The mess springs from the very
structure of US society -- the unequal distribution of power
among its social classes, its economic and political relations
with the rest of the world, its ruling ideology. As errors go,
there's an immense qualitative difference between a system
malfunctioning because its framework is rotting, & the more
limited type of error due to a component glitch within an
otherwise healthy framework. The war in Iraq is the first type
of malfunction: systemic.
The official forms of discourse in US society have degenerated
to the point that they no longer permit acknowledgement -- or
even mention -- of the main issues confronting us. The problems
run too deep. The issues which must be discussed, because
they're so important, cannot be discussed, because
they're too threatening to the powers controlling the system.
The crises facing our society are like those an individual must
confront, when events force upon him a choice of either
internally acknowledging a dark & terrible truth about himself,
or continuing in denial. The truth seems too terrible to bear --
so the denial continues, & the pressure of the crisis
intensifies.
What would a genuine discussion of the issues look like?
If we were to attempt a genuine discussion of the Bush regime,
one might formulate the main issues as these:
Is the regime legitimate? After all, it took office by what
millions recognize was a stolen election enabled by a corrupt
Supreme Court and the president's brother's political machine in
Florida.
Is the regime guilty of massive war crimes? After all, they
invaded a country that posed no threat to the US, killed
hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqis, and have permanently
destroyed Iraqi society in their rush to plunder its oil. (This,
while not permitting the slightest acknowledgement that oil has
anything to do with it.)
Is the regime guilty of high crimes against the
Constitution? They have eavesdropped on millions of citizens.
They torture detainees, many of whom are probably guilty of
little more than being in the wrong place at the wrong time.
They have repealed such basic democratic rights as habeas
corpus, smeared political opponents, pandered to rightwing
theocrats, stacked the judiciary & federal agencies with
political cronies, and quietly sneaked into legislation passages
making easier the declaration of martial law.
Is the regime a de facto dictatorship? After all, not only
do they insist that the president can label anyone an "enemy
combatant" and then disappear them; not only do they openly
assert their belief in the "unitary executive;" they have also
created an artificial state of permanent war, then claimed that
a "nation at war" must grant its executive unlimited powers.
They have openly claimed the right to wage war on anyone, even
on false pretexts, using our bodies & tax dollars to feed a war
machine owned by their cronies -- and added with sneering
condescension that we have no say in any of this. Anyone who
objects is a traitor! All this, in the name of "protecting
Americans, freedom and democracy!"
The mainstream media are unwilling to even recognize the
existence of such questions. Their comfort zones and expertise
are better suited to "reporting" on the
astronaut/love-triangle/diaper story, or the intriguing battles
raging over Anna Nicole's corpse. There's a story in today's
news that Iraq's cabinet has approved a draft of a new "oil
law," which would largely turn control of Iraq's oil over to
Western oil companies. But we know by now that Anna Nicole's
corpse will get far more press in the days ahead, and that no
media "analyst" will perceive any noteworthy connection between
the new oil law and the Iraq War, originally launched because of
imaginary WMD's. (That little boo-boo is regularly ascribed by
the media to "flawed intelligence," an interesting phrase
deserving further examination, if, against rising odds, we
survive the next several months without a world-altering
conflagration.)
What does it mean to "Support the Troops?"
In the giddy prosperity following WWII, it became commonplace in
American culture to sneer contemptuously about the German
soldiers who defended their wartime actions by claiming they
were "just following orders." Underlying these sneers was the
principle set forth at Nuremberg -- that a soldier has a moral
responsibility to refuse to obey orders which their conscience
tells them violate a higher ethical code.
In today's United States, however, courageous and principled
soldiers like Lt. Ehren Watada, who try to do exactly what
Americans sneered at German soldiers for not doing, are jailed,
court-martialed, and summarily dismissed by the press as
"insubordinate."
"Supporting the Troops" should mean supporting soldiers like
Watada, and removing the troops from situations where they must
kill or be killed in an unjust war. It should mean prosecuting
the venal figures in Washington who have sent the troops on this
criminal mission, and lied to the world about the reasons for
it. Yet these same venal politicians, who won't even adequately
fund medical facilities for maimed soldiers, shamelessly use the
phrase "supporting the troops" as an argument for forcing them
to continue fighting a war for oil and defense company profits.
The Treacherous Role of the Democrats
The Democrats gained control of Congress only by virtue of the
fact that they are not Republicans, under conditions where the
electorate instructed them to oppose Bush's deranged
warmongering. Though "victorious," they immediately surrendered
to the Republicans, taking "off the table" the only two measures
which could possibly stop the US war drive: impeachment and
cutting off funding for the war. They then wasted two months
fussing ineffectually with non-binding resolutions of feeble
disapproval (of the "surge," not the war itself), bleating
pitifully to their Republican colleagues for "bipartisanship."
Almost comically, the toothless Senate resolution didn't even
make it to the floor for a vote. It should be clear from this
performance that the Democrats, like the media, are terminally
corrupt, and are in effect collaborating with the Bush regime
against the voters who put them in office.
We have before us the spectacle of the Bush administration
committing crimes which, if attempted by any foreign power,
would rightly be met by torrential denunciation from Congress
and the US media. But when the Bush administration commits these
crimes, the media is basically supportive, while the Democrats
make cynical pretenses of opposition. The Democrats' "criticism"
usually amounts to complaining that Bush's crimes were clumsily
executed or not entirely successful; and that had they been at
the helm they could have pulled off the capers with more
finesse.
Corruption is present to some degree in all governments, but the
critical test of whether a government is beyond all salvation is
whether it has the capacity to acknowledge great crimes
committed by the leadership, and to rectify them. In today's
Washington, however, the Democrats function as a buffer between
the Bush regime and the increasingly angry population. On the
one hand, the Democrats posture dishonestly as administration
"critics"; on the other hand, they ensure that no serious effort
is made to rein the criminals in -- not to mention bringing them
to justice.
Rectifying the corruption should include restoration of the
staggering wealth that in effect has been stolen from the
American people, when Bush and Cheney ladled it out to their
friends at Enron, Bechtel, Halliburton, the oil companies, and
the other defense industries. The $400 million CEO severance
packages, the billions in non-bid government contracts to
defense companies and mercenaries, Cheney's own Halliburton
stock options -- all this and more should be confiscated, and
returned to the rightful possessors of that wealth. It should be
clear that the Democrats would scarcely be able to comprehend
what is being spoken of, here, let alone act as honorable
advocates of its implementation.
Today's America is no democracy -- it's a degenerating tyranny,
disfigured by its military-industrial-governmental cancer. Our
people are increasingly ashamed and terrified of their
government, and rightly so, because we have no control over it,
and it's become a deceitful monstrous danger to us and to the
health of the planet. We're not "The Land of the Free and the
Home of the Brave." To the contrary: We, the people, are on
our knees, cringing and whimpering in dismay and confusion,
prostrate before the forces that have betrayed us.
Richard Mynick is a Berkeley-based writer focusing on the
intersection of media and politics. His essays have appeared on
Online Journal, and he can be reached at
richjm9@yahoo.com
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