Among the premises with which the Feds justify their War on Terror are the hordes of bad guys overrunning the planet. The government wants us to believe that millions of terrorists lurk worldwide, scheming to blow us sky-high. They penetrate our airports and spy on our infrastructure. In their spare time, they form sleeper cells that fiendishly and seamlessly blend into our communities. Indeed, one has probably infiltrated your neighborhood.
Protecting us from this threat domestically and internationally requires corresponding millions of bureaucrats, cops, and soldiers as well as trillions of our taxes -- and, of course, the surrender of our freedom, dignity, and privacy to the State.
Intriguingly, the Feds themselves gainsay this foolishness every year in a publication entitled Country Reports on Terrorism. The Department of State issues it — and you won’t be surprised to learn that though “U.S. law requires the Secretary of State to provide [it to] Congress, by April 30 of each year,” the Report for 2009 appeared only earlier this month. Try paying your taxes that late and see what happens.
I have a question to ask you. I would then like you to ask it of others, particularly of Christians:
How many innocent people would you be willing to kill – purely to defend yourself?
For example, let’s say you are well armed and an armed robber is shooting at you – but the robber is holding a hostage directly in front of him.
Or, suppose someone is shooting at you from within a crowd. Maybe some in the crowd don’t like you. Let’s push it even further and say that most of them hate you, and sympathize with the attacker. To shoot back, you would be aiming at the attacker, but you know you would also hit others.
I repeat:
How many of them would you be willing to kill, even absolutely and purely in self-defense?
I asked this question of someone fairly high up in military intelligence recently. I had to press the point as he beat around the bush for a while. His (eventual) response? "I’m not sure I know the answer to that question." Well, at least he was thinking about it.
As legendary investigative journalist I. F. Stone reminded readers throughout his career: "All governments are run by liars and nothing they say should be believed."
With Stone’s prescriptive warning in mind, the CIA, allegedly in retaliation for the failed May 1 Times Square bomb attempt, fired 18 missiles targeting militants in Pakistan’s North Waziristan tribal area May 11, “killing at least 14 fighters and wounding 4,” according to an unnamed “security official” cited by The New York Times.
George Bush’s “war on terror” isn’t discussed much nowadays, which has enraged more than a few right-wing Republicans who accuse President Barack Obama of being soft on terrorism.
“Doesn’t he know we’re at war,” grumbled a furious guest on Fox News recently. It may have been given a lower profile but in reality, it’s still ongoing. Obama has reauthorized the USA PATRIOT Act until February next year, which means the American people are still vulnerable to telephone wiretaps and to having their records seized by authorities.
Moreover, for the first time ever, a US president has blessed “the targeted killing” of American terrorist suspects under a congressional act passed a few days after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. Currently in the CIA’s sights is Anwar Al-Awlaki, a US-born former imam of Yemeni extraction. Al-Awlaki, thought to be hiding in Yemen, is a “senior recruiter for Al-Qaeda and a spiritual motivator,” according to the FBI.
There was a time when the pen was mightier than the sword. That was a time when people believed in truth and regarded truth as an independent power and not as an auxiliary for government, class, race, ideological, personal, or financial interest.
Today Americans are ruled by propaganda. Americans have little regard for truth, little access to it, and little ability to recognize it.
Truth is an unwelcome entity. It is disturbing. It is off limits. Those who speak it run the risk of being branded “anti-American,” “anti-semite” or “conspiracy theorist.”
Truth is an inconvenience for government and for the interest groups whose campaign contributions control government.
Truth is an inconvenience for prosecutors who want convictions, not the discovery of innocence or guilt.
The Iranian government is celebrating the capture of Abdolmalek Rigi, the leader of a violent group called Jundullah (Arabic for Soldiers of God), which Tehran says is a terrorist organization supported by the United States, Great Britain and Israel.
Jundullah is one of several groups that have been conducting bombings and other violent attacks against Iran’s Islamic regime with the aim of knocking it off balance.
In a July 7, 2008, article for The New Yorker magazine, investigative journalist Seymour Hersh quoted Robert Baer, a former CIA clandestine officer who worked in South Asia and the Middle East for nearly two decades, as saying that Jundullah was one of the militant groups in Iran benefiting from U.S. support.
Hersh also reported that President George W. Bush signed an intelligence finding in late 2007 that allocated up to $400 million for covert operations intended to destabilize Iran’s government, in part, by supporting militant organizations.
In an article in the Los Angeles Times on November 29th, “The case against military tribunals,” Judge Andrew P. Napolitano presented his opposition to military tribunals in the U.S. government’s undeclared “war on terror.”
It’s a violation of the Constitution to use the panels without a declaration of war—and just calling it a “war” on terror doesn’t count.
A devoted constitutional expert, Fox News host, and avowed, conservative disciple of Barry Goldwater and Ronald Reagan, Judge Napolitano noted that:
The last time the government used a military tribunal in this country to try foreigners who violated the rules of war involved Nazi saboteurs during World War II. They came ashore in Amagansett, N.Y., and Ponte Vedra Beach, Fla., and donned civilian clothes, with plans to blow up strategic U.S. targets. They were tried before a military tribunal, and President Franklin D. Roosevelt based his order to do so on the existence of a formal congressional declaration of war against Germany.
In Ex Parte Quirin, the Supreme Court case that eventually upheld the military trial of these Germans—after they had been tried and after six of the eight defendants had been executed—the court declared that a formal declaration of war is the legal prerequisite to the government’s use of the tools of war. The federal government adhered to this principle of law from World War II until Bush’s understanding of the Constitution animated government policy.
Americans have been losing the protection of law for years. In the 21st century the loss of legal protections accelerated with the Bush administration’s “war on terror,” which continues under the Obama administration and is essentially a war on the Constitution and U.S. civil liberties.
The Bush regime was determined to vitiate habeas corpus in order to hold people indefinitely without bringing charges. The regime had acquired hundreds of prisoners by paying a bounty for “terrorists.” Afghan warlords and thugs responded to the financial incentive by grabbing unprotected people and selling them to the Americans.
The Bush regime needed to hold the prisoners without charges because it had no evidence against the people and did not want to admit that the U.S. government had stupidly paid warlords and thugs to kidnap innocent people. In addition, the Bush regime needed “terrorists” prisoners in order to prove that there was a terrorist threat.
While Eric Margolis’ entire comment in the Toronto Sun is a must-read, the following two quotes really hit the nail on the head:
More empires have fallen because of reckless finances than invasion…
If Obama really were serious about restoring America’s economic health, he would demand military spending be slashed, quickly end the Iraq and Afghan wars and break up the nation’s giant Frankenbanks.
Margolis is right.
As I have repeatedly shown,war is bad for the economy. According to a Nobel prize-winning economist,the head of JP Morgan and others, the Iraq war and the war on terror in general were huge factors in destroying our economy.
America is a dying empire, destroying the last of its resources to fight unnecessary wars.Instead of rebuilding our economy so that we can once again be a strong nation, we are wasting trillions fighting those unnecessary wars, thus guaranteeing that we do not have the economic resources to defend ourselves in the future from real threats.