|
What Are You Going To Do Now America?
By Nolan K. Anderson
06/14/05 "ICH"
- - In reading articles on our present, progressive police state of today, I am impressed that some of we (Americans) are beginning to notice the decay of our government that has been going on for years - and not just under this administration that has slithered into the White House for a second time. All the things we are seeing in our mestasizing society have been going on for years. The School Of the Americas was founded in 1946 in Panama and then moved to Ft. Benning Georgia. One of the items on the income side of the "Balance of Payments Ledger" for the US has been the SOA’s export of terrorism and tyranny for almost 60 years. We Americans, who have closed our eyes to this pus filled pustule are beginning to see what it means to be on the receiving end of American style terrorism. We must be careful to remember that it is we Americans who elect the political maggots that design and implement these techniques for export to the rest of the world. General Smedley Butler gave us a detailed description of our war-mongering 70 years ago. We Americans will soon wake up to find that while we worry about the “lesser of the evils” at the ballot box, either of the “evils” is going to continue exporting terrorism through the CIA, The School of the Americas and the cultivation of “valuable” despots and tyrants around the world.
No, what we are seeing now did not start with George Bush. However, a few short years ago I would have thought our offshore gulags, incarceration for life without the benefit of indictment, trial, habeas corpus or access to legal counsel and subject to torture at any whim of the jailers to be something written by some Hollywood pervert for a new horror film. Today, all these things are just "business as usual" for our merry bunch of War Criminals who dominate our country and the rest of the world safely from The White House and Pentagon. Today we Americans close our eyes to these things, pretend they are retaliation for 9/11, feel secure in knowing that our government is only bringing "democracy" to a nation sitting on the power to keep our SUV's on the road or in the garage. ("Why, they really could have been responsible for 9/11"). We listened to Rush Limbaugh and Neal Boortz as they beat the drums for the invasion of a virtually powerless country based on the lies and deceit of a megalomaniac and his poodle. We listen and applaud as Limbaugh compares Abu Ghraib interrogation techniques to normal college fraternity pranks. (No, we don’t cut people’s heads off in front of a camera, but then again, we don’t hang a handcuffed prisoner on his cell door and beat him to death with a baseball bat over four days in front of a camera either. We did this off camera).
How did we Americans get to the point where sadists and torturers are accepted as the “norm” for our military, contract mercenaries and CIA interrogators? Why do we Americans know so little about our military’s part in the Afghan “convoy of death”? How do we explain to our children how the actions of our troops in Falluja differ from Hitler’s Waffen SS and Stalin’s NKVD? How do we explain the difference between our gulags and Stalin’s. How do we explain that we “bought” many of our gulag prisoners from Afghan warlords, tortured them for nonexistent or irrelevant intelligence, and now are trying to keep them prisoners indefinitely with no charges? Do we just continue to watch what is being done in our name and do what we have been doing – nothing - and hope for a different result?
We Americans closed our eyes while Henry Kissinger worked his magic with Nixon on Viet Nam, Laos and Cambodia. Not only did we close our eyes, but we gave Henry a Nobel Prize for "PEACE", before we turned him out to the pasture filled with other tyrants seeking advice on how to steal and kill the helpless ones of the world standing in the way of further riches and political power. Most Americans were and are unaware that there is even such a thing as “Economic Hit Men”. We have no idea that these “Economic Assassins” represent America, the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund in tandem with conventional CIA assassins in an enterprise of robbing poor nations of whatever resource wealth their countries may have.
We closed our eyes and minds to Ruby Ridge (except as entertainment during our six o'clock evening meal). We watched Waco unfold before our eyes with its black smoke and black clad Gestapo (luckily the sound was turned down so we didn't have to put up with the screams of the women and children as they were gassed and cremated). We were so terribly shocked at that wretch, Sadaam Hussein, using the chemical weapons we sold him to gas those pesky Kurds. We condemned Sadaam before the world for his crimes against humanity in "gassing his own people". (The Branch Davidians apparently weren't "our" people).
Sunday we will go to church and "pray for the divine guidance of our president". We will pray for a moral midget whose only claim to fame was being AWOL from the military and being so insignificant that he wasn't even missed for two years.
Yes, in a mere 229 years we have robbed this beautiful country of ours from its owners, exploited its resources for the benefit of a few "philanthropists" and are powerful enough to convince the whole world that "might is right". (Some of us can even convince ourselves). Today, as we sit safely in front of our televisions, we are assured that our government would never use the techniques of Abu Ghraib against we citizens. We are Americans!!!. We are good!!! We are unique and the lessons of history don’t apply to us!!!
We were careful not to let our government become too powerful, just as our founding fathers warned us not to do. It doesn't occur to us that our government's actions against others, even our enemies, is nothing more than a glimpse at the power it is willing and capable of exerting against us the moment it is convinced that WE, the people, present a problem to IT and ITS POWER. If you doubt this proposition, think about who Jose Padilla is and WHERE he has been for the last 3 years and one month. Think about Randy Weaver and the Branch Davidians. Think about the value of past Washington treaties and agreements with the American Indian. Ask yourself how a normally supine and corrupt American Congress could rally itself long enough to pass The Patriot Act I and begin the ritual of approving a forgone conclusion as it further debases the Constitution with the Patriot Act II. Ask yourself if you are going to feel safer with the new “National Identity Card” and a billion Muslims who hate the thought that any American is still breathing.
So, what are you going to do America? Now that the floodgates of duplicity have been opened in Britain concerning the manipulation of intelligence on Iraq’s WMD by our president and his advisors, what are you going to do America? Continue to pray for American success in Iraq? And after Iraq, will you pray for our success in Iran, and Syria and North Korea? Or, will you begin to think about the impeachment of a scoundrel who has robbed our country of its rightful place in the world of civilized nations? A scoundrel whose “defense” budget for next year will equal the defense budget of the rest of the world combined? When are you going to start objecting to the crass corruption involved with the destruction/reconstruction of a defeated country we invaded in order to steal its resources? When are you going to recognize the proof of our Scoundrel-in-Chief having lied us into invading a country that offered no threat to our country? Does it make you feel good Mr./Mrs./Ms. America that we have abandoned any semblance of humanitarianism by discarding the Geneva Convention and allowing such things as Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo and Diego Garcia to exist in our names? How safe do you feel walking the streets of Cairo or any other Muslim city/state as a tourist? Do you feel safe as a tourist in Tel Aviv? For that matter, how safe do you feel in climbing aboard an airplane in the United States even after that little old lady next to you has had her finger nail clippers confiscated?
Nolan K. Anderson is a retired engineer and a veteran of Korea who was once a “conservative” until he found there was nothing left to conserve. (He may be reached at
nkanders@bellsouth.net
).
Copyright © Information
Clearing House. All rights reserved. You may republish under
the following conditions: An active link to the original
publication must be provided. You must not alter, edit or remove
any text within the article, including this copyright notice.
Translate
this page
(In accordance with Title 17
U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to
those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the
included information for research and educational purposes.
Information Clearing House has no affiliation whatsoever with the
originator of this article nor is Information Clearing House
endorsed or sponsored by the originator.) |
