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"Its purpose is to promote
its ideology based upon the perversion of Islam . . ."
-- British Prime Minister Tony
Blair, July 28, 2006
"[W]e've come to learn
more about our enemies -- we learned more about their dark and
distorted vision of Islam."
--President George W. Bush,
September 7, 2006
During his September 7th speech reporting
progress made in the "Global War on Terror," President
Bush cited "9/11" thirty-eight separate times in the
thirty-six minute address. While repeatedly assuring his audience
that "America is safer," invoking the 9/11 attacks
with such frequency was meant to keep the event and the "terror"
it brought to the nation center stage in the minds of his listeners.
Perhaps more than any other president, George W. Bush has utilized
repetition of signal words and phrases during his tenure, especially
to instill fear in both his supporters and those who disagree
with his policies.
"Fear," wrote John
Adams several years before he was elected President of the United
States . . . "Fear is the foundation of most governments;
but it is so sordid and brutal a passion, and renders men in
whose breasts it predominates so stupid and miserable, that Americans
will not be likely to approve of any political institution which
is founded on it." Of course, after his elevation to the
nation's highest office, Adams abandoned this most noble principle,
approving laws to instill fear in those who would dare criticize
his government.
For Adams and for others engaged
in writing the constitution for this new government "of
laws, and not of men," a bedrock principle was that "the
happiness of man, as well as his dignity, consists in virtue."
Indeed, "Honor is truly sacred, but holds a lower rank in
the scale of moral excellence than virtue."
Throughout man's dismal human
history, government by fear has been practiced, sometimes with
a vengeance. Later, historians usually come to regard those periods
of fear and terror as low points in the practice of politics
and governance. Therefore, the Christians and others who defied
bloody Roman rule are seen as martyrs, Christian-political practices
(the Crusades, the Inquisition, witch-burning, New World genocide
and others too numerous to list here) hail the victims of these
outrages but not the perpetrators. More recently, Hitler, Stalin,
Mao, Pol Pot, Saddam Hussein, Usama bin Laden and other ambitious
power-hungry madmen generously employed "fear" to achieve
their blood-soaked goals.
Now three of the 21st century's
democracies, Great Britain, Israel and the United States have
made conscious decisions to conduct public policy by means of
instilling fear in hearts and minds. The Bush Administration
has moved to rule not just foreign enemies but the very nation
itself through a strategy of fear and trembling. How else can
one describe egregious sections of "The Patriot Act,"
secret wiretapping and domestic surveillance, threats to sue
newspapers and reporters, secret detentions, torture, attempts
to legalize the indefinite incarceration of citizens, the public
vilification of administration critics and members of the courts
as un-American and unpatriotic?
Abroad, as writer Thomas Freidman
recently noted, "The world hates George Bush more than any
U.S. president in my lifetime. He is radioactive - and so caught
up in his own ideological bubble that he is incapable of imagining
or forging alternative strategies.
For reasons known and unknown,
Britain's articulate Prime Minister Tony Blair long ago made
a conscious decision after peering into the eyes and soul of
George W. Bush to enthusiastically embrace the Bush Administration's
anti-terrorism and "democratizing" Middle Eastern policies
in the wake of September 11, 2001. It was British writer J. M.
Barrie who noted, "Ambition -- it is the last refuge of
noble minds," echoing Oscar Wilde's "Ambition is the
last refuge of failure."
And of ambition there is plenty.
Like crazed scientists intent on creating the elixir of eternal
life, Bush, Blair and their army of instigators have designs
on turning the entire world into one big, back-slapping "democracy"
where purple-fingered masses march to polls and elect with presumed
legitimacy their representative governments. Whether the voters
will be free from secret government eavesdropping, questionable
detention, "undemocratic" judicial proceedings and
lying politicians: the jury is still out.
In Israel, as its soldiers
and tanks were invading Lebanon and moving ever farther into
country, Israeli spokespeople repeatedly proclaimed that Israel
was not invading Lebanon, it was merely sending its armed
forces north toward Beirut for awhile. Israel's supermen in power
also approved bombing the daylights out of Lebanon in order to
tame Hezbollah and terminate that organization's dreadful practice
of sending rockets by the hundreds into Israel. Never mind the
numbers of men, women and children who are wounded or killed
in the process by either side -- although when tolling up the
slaughter of innocents, top place must go to Israel for accuracy
in blowing apart United Nations observers, Red Cross passengers
and vehicles, buildings where families have taken refuge from
bombardment.
President Bush observed during
his July 28 press outing with Tony Blair, the suffering in Lebanon
was caused not by Israeli bombing raids but by Hezbollah's shelling
of Israel and the capture of some Israeli soldiers in hopes of
negotiating a prisoner exchange. Israel's bombs (including cluster
bombs) and shells may have demolished Lebanese homes and snuffed
out the lives of innocents, but that was beside the point. Bush
also forgot to remind his listeners that Israel had itself abducted
one-third of the democratically-elected Palestinian parliament
and illegally locked them up somewhere -- out of sight, out of
mind.
As Governor of Texas, George
W. Bush demonstrated his fondness for the death penalty, so it
should come as no surprise that he now wants Congress to write
laws permitting abusive interrogations, rigged trials where defendants
are denied the right to see evidence and a warrantless secret
spying free-for-all. These and other perversions of this nation's
valued "democratic" values and ethics suggest that
the "terrorists" have succeeded in proving to their
sympathizers that the United States is as corrupt as they've
always claimed it to be.
No one seems better at staying
"on message" than Vice-President Cheney, who continues
implying that somehow Saddam Hussein was an imminent threat,
that the invasion of Iraq was necessary and that the continued
occupation of that country is on track for success. It was no
surprise when, during his September 10 exclusive hour-long interview
with Tim Russert on "Meet the Press," Cheney would
predictably claim half-a-dozen times that we are making "progress"
in Afghanistan and Iraq. The day after the Cheney interview,
however, Washington Post op-ed pieces described the re-arming
and resurgence of the Taliban and discussed how the war against
terrorism is being lost.
One might wonder whether Bush
Administration leaders are in deep denial and blithely whistling
in the dark. Clearly both Bush and Cheney are averse to questioning
the wisdom of their statements, policies and actions. As increasing
evidence emerges from Thomas Ricks and others to show how many
experts challenged the Bush push to attack Afghanistan and invade
Iraq, these two national leaders cling to the false claim that
all available evidence and argument supported their reasons for
making war just as they chose to do.
As he began his September 7
speech in Atlanta, President Bush quoted Lieutenant General Russ
Honoré's advice, "Don't get stuck on stupid."
But now that they are really "stuck," it is doubtful
Bush and Cheney will ever really wonder where it all went wrong.
They could consider the words of John Adams regarding fear as
the cause of stupidity and misery. For President Bush and his
Republican cheerleaders whose manipulation and good fortune have
permitted years of one-party rule, they would be well-advised
to recall another of Adams's observations. "A single assembly
is liable to all the vices, follies, and frailties of an individual;
subject to fits of humor, starts of passion, flights of enthusiasm,
partialities, or prejudice, and consequently productive of hasty
results and absurd judgments."
As we begin the twenty-first
century, three powerful democracies have willingly and deliberately
perverted the very core of their democratic values and virtues.
Basic principles have been abandoned under cover of platitudes
such as "everything changed after 9/11." Pious rhetoric,
fear mongering, lying, secrecy, manipulation and deceit are not
valid substitutes for honesty, open government, true compassion
and competence. Instead, they inevitably lead to hubris, to war
crimes. Increasingly, the United States, Great Britain and Israel
are becoming Democracies of Death, unmindful of the Adams insistence
on "great political virtues of humility, patience, and moderation,
without which every man in power becomes a ravenous beast of
prey."
Doug Giebel is a writer and analyst who lives
in Montana. He welcomes comment: dougcatz@ttc-cmc.net
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