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CounterPunch
February
11, 2003
A Material Breach
of the Constitution
Bush's War on the Soul of America
by WAYNE MADSEN
It is now time for the U.S. military to act against
a dangerous regime that is in material breach of one of the most
important legal instruments in the world--the U.S. Constitution.
And it is not Sadaam Hussein, Kim Jong Il, or Fidel Castro who
threaten the Constitution.
George Bush, Dick Cheney, and every Cabinet
member swore an oath to protect and defend the Constitution against
all enemies, foreign and domestic. But what happens when the
domestic threat is from the very people who swore to defend the
Constitution?
The U.S. military, including a large
number of Reserves and National Guard are being deployed to the
desert sands of Kuwait, Qatar, Jordan and other countries. Their
absence from the United States permits the Bush regime to seize
more and more constitutional rights of the American people without
the possibility of substantial resistance. The only people who
are currently defenseless in the world today are the American
people--they are vulnerable to the machinations of their own
illegal regime.
That leaves only law enforcement as our
only real defense. And while most police--Federal, state, and
local--seem to be in lockstep with Bush's march towards totalitarianism
in the United States, there are now even rumblings from these
ranks. Said one local law enforcement officer in the Washington,
DC area, "our military reserve personnel are being sent
to the Middle East and our ability as first responders is weakened."
And this from one Federal law enforcement official, "I can
tell you that Bush is heartless."
Hollywood has long pondered, through
movies like Seven Days in May, what might happen to America if
an extra-constitutional situation were to  arise. While most of these cinematic
presentations focused on power-hungry generals seizing control
from democratically-elected presidents, no one in Hollywood ever
really considered the possibility of generals imbued with democratic
values ousting a President who was bent on seizing unconstitutional
powers. However, this is exactly the nightmarish scenario that
is beginning to arise in Washington.
After steamrolling through the U.S. Congress
the USA PATRIOT Act at a time when the legislative branch was
under an obvious home-grown anthrax attack, the Bush regime is
now preparing to drop the other jack boot--the Domestic Security
Enhancement Act of 2003 or as it has been dubbed -- USA Patriot
Act II. This law would effectively abrogate many of the protections
granted by the Bill of Rights and virtually gut the Privacy and
Freedom of Information Acts. It is yet another step towards the
creation of Bush's maniacal American Empire--one that foresees
a final decisive battle between the forces of unbridle corporatism
and fundamentalist Judeo-Christianity on one side and Islam,
European liberal humanism, social democracy, and pacifism on
the other.
Like Roman Caesars Augustus, Tiberius,
Caligula, and Claudius, and Napoleon Bonaparte, Adolf Hitler,
and Benito Mussolini before him, Bush's fanaticism threatens
to plunge the world into endless war and bring to an ignoble
close America's 227-year democratic run.
It is perhaps telling that as the Bush
regime further curtails the public's right to know, patriots
within the U.S. law enforcement establishment chose to leak the
"Confidential-Not for Distribution" draft of the "USA
Patriot II" Act. Just as Pentagon officials are leaking
information on Donald Rumsfeld's inhuman plans to cremate the
remains of U.S. troops killed by Iraqi chemical or biological
weapons, there are increasing signs that the U.S. government
bureaucracy is becoming increasingly restless with the Bush clique.
The General Accounting Office, the congressional watchdog agency,
fresh from being trounced in its efforts to obtain Dick Cheney's
notes on his secretive Energy Task Force, is now conducting an
audit of Federal agency compliance with the Privacy and Freedom
of Information Acts. This is in response not to Congress, which
could not care less about either law, but from government bureaucrats
who are apparently blowing the whistle on abuses. It may not
result in much of anything, but indicates that there may be a
simmering reaction to Bush from one of the most static layers
in government--the career civil service.
The career military has just about had
it with Rumsfeld's constant paranoia about leaks and his aggressiveness
in conducting the type of sweeping investigations of his officer
corps and non-commissioned officer ranks that are reminiscent
of Richard Nixon's Plumbers Unit.
Anyone who closely examines Patriot II
will realize that the document represents the same sort of power
grab by Hitler after the Reichstag Fire of 1933. Using the pretext
that the Reichstag was burned down by Communists (when, in fact,
it was engineered by Nazis), Hitler pushed through the "Decree
by the Reich President for the Defense of People and State."
The Reichstag Fire Decree, intended only as a "temporary"
measure, permitted Hitler and his regime to jail political opponents
at will, bypass the judicial system, and eventually force millions
of people into concentration camps.
Like the Reichstag Fire Decree, there
is nothing really temporary with either Patriot I or II. With
a virtual rubber stamp legislature, Bush can simply extend the
so-called "sunset" provisions of the first act and
any that may appear in the second.
It is also important to point out that
much of what is contained in Patriot II is not aimed at effectively
defending the United States against terrorists, but at curtailing
the freedoms of the American people. In fact, Bush has all but
ignored Al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden, choosing instead to pathologically
focus on Saddam Hussein.
Attorney General John Ashcroft would
be armed with increased powers to curtail the public's access
to government information, including information on environmental
hazards and other public safety information shared by corporations
with the Federal government. And, while the FBI would be able
to routinely and without sufficient court order browse the financial
records of American citizens, Cabinet and sub-cabinet officers,
members of Congress, and Supreme Court Justices could hide from
the Internal Revenue Service any fringe benefits deemed to be
in the category of "protective security."
In a direct violation of the Tenth Amendment,
which states, "The powers not delegated to the United States
by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are
reserved to the states respectively, or to the people,"
Ashcroft and the FBI will also be able to terminate state laws
prohibiting local police from gathering information about people
and organizations. These laws were enacted in reaction to past
abuses by so-called police "Red Squads" that later
were reorganized to keep track of civil rights and anti-war groups.
Further violating the letter and spirit
of the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878, the Pentagon would be permitted
to conduct DNA dragnets and collect the DNA of "certain
classes of aliens including those engaged in activity that endangers
national security." Certainly, if DNA technology were available
to Hitler, such a decree would have enabled the Gestapo to collect
the DNA of Jews, the Roma people, Jehovah's Witnesses, and Africans--all
of whom were declared aliens and not Germans under Hitler's racial
purification laws.
Elements of racial purification are also
contained in Patriot II. The Bush regime would be empowered to
take away the citizenship of Americans involved with a "foreign
terrorist organization." The Secretary of State is currently
authorized the designate, as his whim, what constitutes a "foreign
terrorist" organization. It is not just Arab or Muslim-Americans
who could lose their citizenship in this respect. In their zeal
to ethnically-cleanse America, the Bush regime could eventually
withdraw citizenship from Latinos involved with the Colombian
FARC or Mexican Zapatistas, Tamil-Americans, Basque-Americans,
Irish-Americans, or any American ethnic group that begins to
actively oppose, in concert with revolutionary or secessionist
movements, America's grand imperial designs in their native lands.
The U.S. government would also be empowered
to conduct surveillance of groups active in the United States
that are deemed "terrorist" by foreign governments.
This would effectively end America's role as a safe haven for
pro-democracy organizations fighting repressive regimes that
join Bush's coalition for world domination. By not adequately
defining what constitutes "material support" for designated
terrorist organizations, the Bush regime is coming ominously
close to declaring thought crimes to be a national security offense.
A web site, which merely expresses support for some group or
cause opposed by the Bush cabal, could be shut down and its operators
jailed if someone decides it is a threat.
Supported by a sycophantic media, the
Bush regime is trying to convince the world that its first war
of many is just. But even conservatives like Robert Novak are
questioning Bush's Imperial Romanesque plans. In a February 10
column, Novak writes that Bush "projects an American imperium
that evokes apprehension among some conservative supporters of
President Bush."
Similarly, members of the U.S. intelligence
community are pointing to an October 7, 2002 letter from the
CIA to the Senate Intelligence Committee. The CIA took issue
with the notion that Saddam would engage in a first use of weapons
of mass destruction or give them to terrorists like Al Qaeda.
The CIA has also dismissed links between Saddam and Al Qaeda,
a stance supported by the agency's British counterpart, MI-6.
As evidence of just how far out of step
the Bush administration is with the rest of the world, consider
the statements of America's traditional allies. Responding to
Rumsfeld's Hermann Goering-like bellicosity, Belgian Foreign
Minister Louis Michel said, "When one has to take a slap
in the face such as the insulting remarks . . . by Mr. Rumsfeld,
who comes to teach a thing or two to 'old Europe', the Europe
of democratic values, humanist Europe, the Europe of the Age
of Enlightenment, personally I find that this hurts." The
press aide to Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chretien called Bush
a moron. The former German Justice Minister likened Bush to Hitler.
Bush insulted his former friend, Mexico's President Vicente Fox,
by walking away from a press conference before the translator
had finished translating to English Fox's answer to a question.
Bush was miffed that Mexico was not supporting Bush in the UN
Security Council. He ratchets up North Korea's Kim Jong Il and
risks a potential nuclear war by telling a reporter that he "hates"
Kim because he starves his own people. Bush refers to Russian
President Vladimir Putin as "Pooty Poot" and then expects
Russia's support for his Iraq and North Korea adventures--support
he unsurprisingly fails to get. Bush calls the Pakistanis "Pakis"
and Greek "Grecians." He doesn't know the difference
between two incoming NATO members -- Slovenia and Slovakia.
Bush proudly stands on a trash heap of
treaties he has rejected either in word or by spirit--Kyoto,
Madrid and Oslo, International Criminal Court, Anti-Ballistic
Missile, Nuclear Test-Ban, the Biological and Toxin Warfare Convention
(BTWC), Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination
Against Women (CEDAW), Ottawa Convention on Land Mines, and,
more recently, the UN Charter and NATO.
Bush's cult-like right-wing supporters
begin calling for sanctions against France and Germany. Fine.
Thanks to Bush's rants, we already have 100,000 North Korean
artillery shells trained on 37,000 US troops and millions of
South Koreans. But when the pseudo-moderate Colin Powell calls
France and Germany the "Paris-Berlin Axis," he continues
the insults of Rumsfeld, who publicly placed Germany in a pro-Iraqi
axis with Cuba and Libya. And obviously the Bush war hawks forget
one very important thing: by threatening Paris, Berlin, and Brussels,
the Bush clique may be the first U.S. administration to force
France to think about retargeting its nuclear "force de
frappe" strike force, which is complete with sea-to-ground
and ground-to-ground intercontinental nuclear missiles. And with
Putin now in closer consultation with France, Russia may also
feel that it is past time to again focus its nuclear arsenal
on a possible conflict with the United States.
Which brings us back to the original
concept of Bush's extra-constitutional maneuverings. With an
administration that will soon have at its disposal the control
over non-auditable computer voting machines across the land,
Bushes-in-waiting that will undoubtedly seek higher national
office on an endless quasi-monarchical merry-go-round, a compliant
Congress run by repulsive demagogues like Tom DeLay, Mitch McConnell,
George Allen, Curt Weldon, and Rick Santorum, and virtual dictatorial
powers enshrined in the Patriot I and II Acts, there is no relief
in sight for America's rapidly fading democracy.
A former British Lieutenant Colonel named
George Washington once turned the weapons of his army of rebels
against his former masters, thus helping to launch the United
States as a free and independent nation. One of Washington's
indicted co-conspirators and successors as President, Thomas
Jefferson, gave us a blueprint on how to handle the Bush regime:
"Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their Powers
from the Consent of the Governed, that Whenever any form of Government
becomes destructive of these Ends, it is the Right of the People
to alter or to abolish it, and to institute a new Government...
it is their Right, it is their Duty, to throw off such Government,
and to provide new Guards for their future Security."
And just in case the fascists in control
of our government contend that the Founding Fathers were part
of another era, let us remember some more recent quotes:
"This country, with its institutions,
belongs to the people who inhabit it. Whenever they shall grow
weary of the existing government, they can exercise their constitutional
right of amending it, or exercise their revolutionary right to
overthrow it."--Abraham Lincoln.
"I would remind you that extremism
in the defense of liberty is no vice. And let me remind you also
that moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue."--Barry
Goldwater.
"For the sake of peace and justice,
let us move toward a world in which all people are at last free
to determine their own destiny."--Ronald Reagan.
From our Founders to our more recent
leaders we have been given the answer to how best deal with the
gravest constitutional dilemma that has ever befallen the United
States of America. Our modern militia, whose forbearers defended
us from the British, pro-slavery secessionists, the Germans,
and the Soviet Union, must now defend us once again against all
enemies, not foreign but domestic.
Wayne Madsen
is a Washington, DC-based investigative journalist and columnist.
He wrote the introduction to Forbidden
Truth.
Madsen can be reached at: WMadsen777@aol.com
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