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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsAmerica's Torture Machine Is No Aberration—It's Part of Our Imperial Decline
http://www.alternet.org/civil-liberties/americas-torture-machine-no-aberration-its-part-our-imperial-declineIf 9/11 was a test of Americas national character, we failed it. As distant as this possibility seems now, Americans of all creeds, colors and political affiliations felt united for a few weeks after the collapse of the Twin Towers. Yes, that soon gave way to jingoism, to strip-mall attacks on presumed Muslims and to the invasion of Afghanistan, which even a cursory, Cliffs Notes history of the Near East will tell you is the place where empires go to die.
But bear with me for a moment here. For any New Yorker who lived through that time, those weeks of trauma and communal mourning remain a key event in ones personal relationship to the city. I can remember the mounds of white dust inside the storefronts near Ground Zero. I can remember when every Urdu-speaking cab driver and Cantonese-speaking shopkeeper sported an American flag. I can remember the NYPD bagpipe choir marching through the mists of Broadway early one morning, in memory of their fallen brothers. Those images and many more, like especially lucid dreams, will be with me until I die.
If the attacks themselves seemed like a latter-day Pearl Harbor, a call to unified national purpose, it soon became apparent that there was no purpose around which we could unite. The war on terror had no clear enemy, no clear goals and no conceivable end point. There was no Berlin to capture, no Wehrmacht troops who could surrender and go home to lead peaceful lives. Although the war may be endless, a great victory has already been won: the victory over democracy by the imperial executive and the forces of the deep state, a new form of soft totalitarianism more cleverly disguised than the older and more obvious ones. A democratic government is supposed to operate with the consent of the governed. When the governed are conditioned by fear, bathed in paranoid propaganda and offered only one choice trust us to keep you safe, or face the wrath of a world that hates you consent becomes a matter of instinct, or pathological compulsion.
The years that followed 9/11 have been closer to a latter-day Vietnam than to World War II, although the widespread social discord of the Vietnam era has played out less visibly, this time around, in the submerged arena of national psychology or the national soul. These years have revealed us as a nation of weakness and fear rather than one of strength and fortitude. You know those oft-parodied signs from the Battle of Britain, the ones that say Keep Calm and Carry On? Well, the Brits pretty much did that in 1940, while undergoing a sustained terror-bombing campaign that killed at least 40,000 civilians within four months. What would our version be? Cower in Terror and Keep on Buying Stuff? Rinse Daily in Misinformation and Denial?
orpupilofnature57
(15,472 posts)harun
(11,348 posts)Enthusiast
(50,983 posts)That's why they went to the trouble of voter purges and subterfuge in Florida.
Bush sued Gore for the win in the Supreme Court. This was no small matter. It was a five to four decision (like Citizens United).
This was unprecedented in all of history.
It was a black operation all the way, including the 911 attack.
They knew the attack was coming. They® watched it unfold and prevented any interference.
I will never believe otherwise.
Hoppy
(3,595 posts)Saying, fuck-ups like Bush and Cheney could never have participated in such a skilled operation.
Dont call me Shirley
(10,998 posts)Enthusiast
(50,983 posts)WinkyDink
(51,311 posts)true.
1. The "enemy" was truth, honor, integrity, decency, the U.S. Constitution, and the sovereign oil-bearing and ancient-artifact-possessing states of the Middle East with the glaring exception of Uncle Bandar's (and alleged home to alleged 9/11 hijackers) Saudi Arabia.
2. The "clear goals" = $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$, pervasive citizen control through NSA spying, and Fascism.
3. Why stop the M-I C gravy train?
bemildred
(90,061 posts)It is all about control, or the fear of losing it. Expediency rules the day. And once we abandoned the rule of law, we became just like everybody else. THAT is the Neocons gift to the USA, we are unexceptional now, and for good.
newfie11
(8,159 posts)The innocents that were turned in for a $500 bounty are still captives. Not war criminals but subject to torture just the same.
My country is being run by sadistic monsters. This is spreading on down to the police.
We have enough nuclear warheads to destroy every living thing on earth but that's not enough.
Look at the budget for the MIC. We are paying to continue this insanity.
People in this country seem so oblivious to it.
fasttense
(17,301 posts)It happened when petty little politicians and corporate tools took over the courts and put the welfare of one drunkard ahead of the law. It happened when citizens stood idly by as their country became a kingdom for rich men to play with. It happened when the CIA was taken over.by a snuff porn king and wanna be serial murderers.
It happened when the citizens of a country turned to.worship greed and wealth.
Dont call me Shirley
(10,998 posts)perception of each is truly it's opposite. Their weakness is their utter inability to admit mistake, continuing on the same old mistakes incessantly is weakness. Strength is not out-clevering the other, strength is having the courage to admit you have made a mistake, then fixing it. Their insanity is weakness. Our sanity is our strength. Their obsession with destruction is their weakness, they perceive that as their strength. We must make the RE aware that they are weak, thieving is weakness, militarism is weakness, control over others is weakness, genocide is weakness, silencing others is weakness.
Real strength is self-control, the ability to differentiate between right and wrong, self-awareness, building and maintaining healthy community.
chervilant
(8,267 posts)When the governed are conditioned by fear, bathed in paranoid propaganda and offered only one choice trust us to keep you safe, or face the wrath of a world that hates you consent becomes a matter of instinct, or pathological compulsion.
AND:
In his series of articles on Dick Cheney and his legacy published in the New York Review of Books last winter, journalist and U.C. Berkeley professor Mark Danner observes that war architects like Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld appear blissfully unaware of a fact obvious to everyone else: Their Iraq invasion, meant to forge a Pax Americana in the Middle East and cow rogue nations into submission, has had exactly the opposite effect. It has exposed American military might as a paper tiger, possessed of the magical power to create more enemies in every country it touches, and has encouraged the rise of a new adversary, more sophisticated and culture-savvy than al-Qaida ever was. It has made us look both weak and evil.
Torture apologists fall into the same epistemological error and the same existential
nihilism, you might say when they announce that they dont care how many eggs get broken as long as we are kept safe. (Then theres the wimpier, moderate Obama administration version, which is every bit as offensive: Without quite endorsing what did or did not happen, were going to agree never to think about it again.) First of all, were almost certainly less safe. More important than that, the criminal acts meant to keep us safe have stripped us bare before the whole world as a lawless and decadent empire that doesnt look as if its worth saving.
There are many citizens in this nation -- self included -- who've been vocally opposed to the sadistic and insane "War on Terror" and the commensurate destruction of our rights. We've marched and demonstrated and written letters, to no avail.
And, we're still denigrated by the false patriots whose anxiety over cognitive dissonance renders them incapable of seeing the truth.