NEWS YOU WON'T FIND ON CNN

End Game

By John S. Hatch

“Why should we subsidize intellectual curiosity?”—Ronald Reagan

16/09/08 "ICH" -- - -The American predilection for choosing fuzzy myth over grim reality is one factor that has been driving the US ever closer to the abyss. There is danger in delusion. Americans always seem to suffer fools gladly. Nixon. Twice. Reagan. Twice. George H. W. Bush. George W. Bush. Twice! And their loathsome Vice Presidents—Agnew, Ford, Bush, Quayle, Cheney.

A McCain/Palin administration might supply that final push toward oblivion. More on that below.

Despite a mountain of easily accessible evidence to the contrary, many Americans choose to believe that Ronald Reagan was a kind and gentle grandfatherly person, the Great Communicator (if mostly of clichés from cue-cards, and Nancy whispering in his ear).

Both McCain and Obama sing his mythical praises and make self-serving and ostentatious claims regarding presumed rights of succession. Both debase themselves on the grave of this frightful ghost who was always a frigid and calculating phantasm.

In fact, Mr. Reagan had a lot in common with George W. Bush when it comes to illegal wars, disappearances, torture, death squads, murder, spin and denial. And all for reasons as vacuous as those of the latter. ‘Freedom’. ‘Democracy’. ‘The American Way’.

He found a pretext to invade Grenada, population 90,000. Operation Urgent Fury made the world safe for—nutmeg, the country’s chief export. As Michael Ledeen (Reagan Administration insider and Iran-Contra conspiracist) said: “Every ten years or so, the United States needs to pick up some small crappy little country and throw it against the wall, just to show we mean business.” If only it were once a decade...

In Nicaragua, ‘contras’ trained at Fort Benning, Georgia’s School of the Americas (since changed to ‘Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation’ but still teaching torture) spread across the countryside to instill maximum terror in the population by torturing and murdering more or less randomly. No one was exempt.
 

John Stockwell is a 13-year veteran of the CIA and a former U.S. Marine Corps major. Here’s what he had to say about Reagan’s ‘Freedom Fighters’, whom he (Reagan) compared to the founding fathers. Founding Fathers?

“They go into villages. They haul out families. With the children forced to watch, they castrate the father. They peel the skin off his face. They put a grenade in his mouth, and pull the pin. With the children forced to watch, they gang-rape the mother, and slash her breasts off. And sometimes, for variety, they make the parents watch while they do these things to the children.”

Or how about this in the name of exporting ‘freedom and democracy and The American Way’:

“They gave them crank generators -- with "U.S.A.I.D." written on the side, so the people even knew where these things came from -- and developed a wire that was strong enough to carry the current and fine enough to fit between the teeth, so you could put one wire between the teeth, and the other in or around the genitals. You could crank, and submit the individual to the greatest amount of pain, supposedly, that the human body can register.” They did this to whomsoever, as they still do, knowing that they enjoy impunity. Freedom and democracy.

In Guatemala America’s client government death squads killed around 200,000, with at least 626 massacres in Mayan villages. These weren’t ‘accidental massacres’ or ‘collateral damage’; these were terror killings approved by the Great Communicator, who called President Rios Montt, a devout Christian, ‘a man of great personal integrity’. Indeed. Children were thrown into burning buildings, were thrown into the air and speared on bayonets, or were swung by the ankles into poles, smashing their heads. Freedom and democracy.

In El Salvador ‘Blowtorch Bob’ D’Aubisson presided. He came to his moniker honestly. He liked to begin the blowtorch session on the victim’s genitals. Needing to practice their new skills learned at the School of the Americas, his fascists would kidnap unwitting derelicts off the streets and torture them to death at demonstration sessions. teach-ins. Their bodies would then be deposited back on the streets as one more act of terror. A bonus, so to speak.

During the El Mozote Massacre in 1981, around eight hundred people were slaughtered. Men were shot or beheaded. Women were gang raped and then killed as children watched. Then the children were bludgeoned or burned alive. Tiny skulls became prized as candle-holders or ‘good luck charms’. More of Ronnie’s work by proxy. He knew. He approved. He rewarded. George H. W. Bush was in on it. Every step of the way.

In Honduras, similar things were happening. A list containing the names of military officers suspect to the Reagan Administration was delivered by Ollie North. They were killed, along with thousands of Hondurans.

Before being elected, Reagan had treasonously made a secret deal with Iranian leaders to not release the American hostages until his Inauguration (which is what happened). Now a very busy Ollie North was overseeing a plan (‘Rex 84 Bravo’) to imprison up to 400,000 Americans in concentration camps (sound familiar?), as well as illegal shipments of arms to Iran, CIA planeloads of heroin and cocaine into the US, and the distribution of money and arms to Reagan’s beloved ‘Contras’. (Three of the most implicated in Reagan’s bloody crimes would later be appointed to high-level positions in the Bush II Administration: John Negroponte, Elliot Abrams, and Otto Reich. Abrams was a signatory to the Project for the New American Century, a map for world domination and which longed for a ‘New Pearl Harbor Event’ to propel the plan. Then 9-11 magically happened.)

And yet Reagan remains largely venerated. If one dares mention his vile crimes against some of humanity’s most vulnerable, one is likely to be met with a blank stare, or with incredulity and hostility. ‘The Gipper? Naaah! You commie!’

Unlike Mr. Bush, some of the neo-cons in his dual disastrous Administrations know their history. They know that, a la Goebbels if a big lie is spun enough times, it will be widely accepted as truth. The Kennedy assassination was ‘solved’ even before it happened. Like 9/11.

They knew that Nixon was brought down because the concept of ‘Executive Privilege’ (later to be transformed into that of ‘Unitary Executive’) was not robust enough to shield him from having to turn over those incriminating tapes. Pesky, meddling Congress was too powerful. No problem!

They knew that perception is everything, and a President can literally get away with murder like Reagan if he is just portrayed properly. People were also gullible enough to believe V.P. George H. W. Bush, former head of the CIA, when he claimed not to be ‘in the loop’ regarding the Iran-Contra crimes, which were actually worse than most people know even today (for example certain rich politicians became further enriched via millions from Saudi Arabia and other Middle Eastern nations, something President George W. Bush took pains to conceal forever, along with other misdeeds of his father.)

They knew that a combination of fear and panic and a base call to patriotism can propel an ill-informed (or misinformed) population in any direction the manipulators choose, especially when the latter appeal to nationalism and insane Exceptionalism as justifications.

Learning from recent history and relying on Bush’s willingness to go along, his became the most powerful, most secretive, and least accountable Presidency in the nation’s history. Congress was simply ignored, with ‘signing statements’ replacing its former authority. Two criminal invasions were launched solely on Presidential authority. International treaties and conventions were abrogated or ignored.

The President, while denying it, not only did away with the centuries old concept of habeas corpus, he instituted policies of kidnapping (‘extraordinary rendition’) and torture (at the very least one hundred people have died under vile torture in America’s dungeons abroad). Discussions were conducted at the highest levels of the Bush Administration on what forms of torture to choose, and whether the President has the authority to order that a child’s testicles be crushed in front of his parents. (Affirmative.) One struggles to explain the degree of psychopathic sexual sadism that seems to have been so widely employed and enjoyed.

The President, while doing everything in his power to deny an investigation into the events of 9/11, and then everything to thwart it, nevertheless exploited the tragedy to maximum advantage in spying on Americans, detaining them, launching two illegal invasions resulting in perhaps a million deaths, and in so doing he engaged in countless war crimes and crimes against humanity.

A problem is that as in law with the Presidency once a precedent has been set, it stands and can be acted upon, and strengthened forever into the future. Thus the United States today has not a President, but a de facto king who need answer to no one. As we have seen, Congress can be ignored. Subpoenas are treated with contempt. The Supreme Court is so in name only. When Nixon famously said in a David Frost interview ‘If the President does it, then it’s not illegal’, people were aghast and thought that poor Tricky Dick had finally tilted over the edge. Today that’s exactly how the President operates, without shame or apology.

Given all that has happened in the past eight years, that the American people would even consider allowing someone like John McCain/Sarah Palin the opportunity to build even further upon the concept of Unitary Executive Power is quite appalling, and frightening.

That America (s)elected Bush and tolerated him twice is a disgrace to America, but it’s also a debasement of all humanity. We are all diminished.

America is thinking of bestowing on an angry and often irrational old man (a ‘war hero’, remember?) and a neophyte neo-con Christian anti-feminist Armageddon enthusiast unfettered power to ignore Congress, the Constitution, the law, and the wishes of Americans, to take a belligerent stance with the newly powerful Russia (they both were totally wrong about recent events in Georgia), to perhaps ‘bomb bomb bomb, bomb bomb Iran. It’s hard to think that voters would be so foolhardy, so soon. But then they voted for Reagan. Twice. If America chooses to continue down the path it has trodden for the past eight years, I fear there’s not much further to go before we’re all nowhere.

What if a candidate pledged to return the Presidency (and America) to the rule of law, to end all illegal wars, including covert ones, to make reparations, to free all illegally held prisoners and pay reparations, to never again invade any country or use illegal weapons against civilians such as depleted uranium, white phosphorous, thermobaric explosives, chemical and bacterial weapons, napalm, lasers, and others?

What if a candidate pledged a genuinely independent Truth Commission to investigate the Bush Administration and to bring its many criminals to justice, starting at the top?

What if a candidate pledged to end corrupt lobbying practices in Washington, to demand better and responsible corporate citizenship, to end an unfair system of taxation and to begin restoring the middle class?

What if a candidate pledged to strike a Commission to finally properly investigate who was responsible for 9/11 and bring them to justice no matter who they are?

What if a candidate pledged to stop wasting trillions on the military and instead began improving American infrastructure, education, health care, the environment and began to address the issue of homelessness? What if instead of bursting bombs, flying bullets, and political meddling the US exported genuine no-strings financial, food and health aid to needy populations around the world, thus for once fomenting respect and gratitude instead of justified hatred and loathing?

It’s never going to happen. Why not?
 

John S. Hatch is a Vancouver writer and film-maker.

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