October 2004 commentary:
The election of the American Empire's next War President is a few days away...... and I'm still waiting for the important issues to be discussed.
These are:
1. Is the new, radical doctrine of Preventive War (the polite modern term for War Of Aggression) working? Will the world let us get away with invading anyone for any reason (after we've scared ourselves silly with imaginary threats)? Do we really have the resources and will, to be the world's policeman (and judge, and executioner)?
2. How big will the American Gulag get? Will there be any oversight, any rules at all, in our growing global prison network? We've taken over Saddam's prisons, re-filled them, staffed them with Saddam's former secret police and West Virginia trailer trash, given them total impunity, and told them to get results......any way they can. Same thing with the Taliban's and Soviet's old torture centers at Bagram and other Afghan hell-holes. Guantanamo (the training center for Abu Ghrab). The military brig in South Carolina, where an American citizen (Padilla) has been held for two years and counting, without charge or trial. Diego Garcia. "Rendering" prisoners to nations whose torturers have even less restraint than ours. Others sites, certainly, that we don't even know about.
3. How much of the Bill of Rights and the Constitution will we set aside, in our terror of the terrorists? Habeus corpus, the right to free movement (are you on the "no-fly" list?; are you sure?), the right to privacy, the right to a trial before imprisonment, the right to a lawyer, lawyer-client confidentiality, all of these are going or gone. All power is being concentrated in the Executive Branch. The Imperial President claims the power to label anyone a "terrorist", or "illegal combatant", and thereby strip away all Constitutional protections, all treaty protections, all Christian morality. Shouldn't we have had a national debate about it, before we set aside the Constitution?
4. What have we done to fix the election system, so that we never again have one guy get the most votes, and the other guy becomes President? Next time, are we going to let the Supreme Court decide, or let one candidate's brother count the votes (which one?), or some new and truly creative (and equally non-Constitutional) method?
5. What, exactly, will be our response, when nuclear weapons are used against American cities? An eye for an eye? 10 lives, 100 lives, in blood vengeance for each of our dead? How well has that Old Testament strategy worked so far? We've killed about 30,000 Others (most of them Iraqi and Afghan civilians), in retribution for our 3,000 9/11 dead. We carried out the collective punishment of Fallujah, killing hundreds (again, almost all civilians, this is a pattern), when 3 of our "civilian security contractors" (the polite modern term for mercenary) were killed. Have we won yet? Are we safe yet? Or have we merely increased the amount of hatred, the willingness to kill, in our own nation and throughout the world? We ought to be seriously considering what our response will be, when Houston or San Diego or Anchorage die, since it's only a matter of time.
In addition to not discussing the important issues, both sides are also doing vast amounts of wishful thinking.
Emperor Bush feeds the American people a pleasant fantasy, a self-congratulatory Myth, our self-image. All about how America is the LightOfTheWorld, and Americans (and maybe Israelis) are God's Chosen People, with a Divine Right to rule the planet. All about how we are bringing freedom and prosperity to Iraq and Afghanistan.......just like we tried to bring it to Vietnam...and Nicaraqua.....and the Shah's Iran....and Chile after Allende....and the Phillipines in 1898.....the list is long....
Kerry is positioning himself as the KindlerAndGentler Imperialist, in contrast to Bush's outright thuggery. A difference of style.
Whoever wins the Presidency is going to lose the Iraq war, and get blamed for not being tough enough. "If only we'd used nukes against Fallujah, earlier than we did, that would have ShockedAndAwed them, that would have prevented..." |
