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America Has Fallen to a Jacobin
Coup
By Paul Craig Roberts
09/16/05 "ICH" -- -- The most important
casualties of September 11 are respect for truth and American
liberty. Propaganda has replaced deliberation based on objective
assessment of fact. The resurrection of the Star Chamber has made
moot the legal protections of liberty.
The US invasion of
Iraq was based on the deliberate suppression of fact. The invasion
was not the result of mistaken intelligence. It was based on
deliberately concocted "intelligence" designed to deceive the US
Congress, the American public, and the United
Nations.
In an interview with Barbara Walters on ABC
News, General Colin Powell, who was Secretary of State at the time
of the invasion, expressed dismay that he was the one who took the
false information to the UN and presented it to the world. The
weapons of mass destruction speech, he said, is a "blot" on his
record. The full extent of the deception was made clear by the
leaked top secret "Downing Street Memos."
Two and one-half
years after the March 2003 invasion, the US Congress and the
American people still do not know the reason Iraq was invaded. The
US is bogged down in an expensive and deadly combat, and no one
outside the small circle of neoconservatives who orchestrated the
war knows the reason why. Many guesses are rendered – oil, removal
of Israel’s enemy – but the Bush administration has never disclosed
its real agenda, which it cloaked with the WMD
deception.
This itself is powerful indication that American
democracy is dead. With the exception of rightwing talk radio,
everyone in America now knows that the invasion of Iraq was based on
false information. Yet, 40 percent of the public and both political
parties in Congress still support the ongoing war.
The
CIA has issued a report that the war is working only for Osama bin
Laden. The unprovoked American aggression against Iraq, the horrors
perpetrated against Muslims in Abu Ghraib prison, and the slaughter
and mistreatment of Iraqi noncombatants, have radicalized the Muslim
world and elevated bin Laden from a fringe figure to a leader
opposed to American hegemony in the Middle East. The chaos created
in Iraq by the US military has provided al Qaeda with superb
training grounds for insurgency and terrorism. Despite overwhelming
evidence that the "war on terror" is in fact a war for terror,
Republicans still cheer when Bush says we have to "fight them over
there" so they don’t come "over here."
If fact played any
role in the decision to continue with this war, the US would not be
spending hundreds of billions of borrowed dollars to provide
recruits and training for al Qaeda, to radicalize Muslims, and to
destroy trust in the United States both abroad and among its own
citizens.
American casualties (dead and wounded) of
this gratuitous war are now approximately 20,000. In July, Defense
Secretary Rumsfeld said the war might continue for 12 years. US
casualties from such protracted combat would eat away US troop
strength. Considering the well-publicized recruitment problems,
America would require a draft or foreign mercenaries in order to
continue a ground war. Like the over-extended Roman Empire, the US
would have to deplete its remaining wealth to pay
mercenaries.
Dead and wounded Americans are too high a price
to pay for a war based on deception. This alone is reason to end the
war, if necessary by impeaching Bush and Cheney and arresting the
neoconservatives for treason. Naked aggression is a war crime under
the Nuremberg standard, and neoconservatives have brought this shame
to America.
There is an even greater cost of the war – the
legal system that protects liberty, a human achievement for which
countless numbers of people gave their lives over the centuries. The
Bush administration used September 11 to whip up fear and hysteria
and to employ these weapons against American liberty. The
Orwellian-named Patriot Act has destroyed habeas corpus. The
executive branch has gained the unaccountable power to detain
American citizens on mere suspicion or accusation, without evidence,
and to hold Americans indefinitely without a
trial.
Foolishly, many Americans believe this power can
only be used against terrorists. Americans don’t realize that the
government can declare anyone to be a terrorist suspect. As no
evidence is required, it is entirely up to the government to decide
who is a terrorist. Thus, the power is unaccountable. Unaccountable
power is the source of tyranny.
The English-speaking world
has not seen such power since the 16th and 17th centuries when the
Court of Star Chamber became a political weapon used against the
king’s opponents and to circumvent Parliament. The Star Chamber
dispensed with juries, permitted hearsay evidence, and became so
reviled that "Star Chamber" became a byword for injustice. The Long
Parliament abolished the Star Chamber in 1641. In obedience to the
Bush regime, the US Congress resurrected it with the Patriot Act.
Can anything be more Orwellian than identifying patriotism with the
abolition of habeas corpus?
Historians are quick to note that
the Star Chamber was mild compared to Gitmo, to the US practice of
sending detainees abroad to be tortured, and to the justice (sic)
regime being run by Attorney General "Torture" Gonzales and his
predecessor, "Draped Justice" Ashcroft, who went so far as to say
that opposition to the Patriot Act was itself the mark of a
terrorist.
The time-honored attorney-client privilege is
another casualty of the "war on terror." Taking their cue from the
restrictions placed on lawyers representing Stalin’s victims in the
1930s show trials, Justice (sic) Department officials seek to limit
attorneys representing terrorist suspects to procedural niceties.
Lynn Stewart, attorney for Omar Abdel Rahman, was handed a letter by
a Justice (sic) Department prosecutor instructing her how to
represent her client. When she did what every good lawyer would do
and represented her client aggressively, she was arrested, indicted
and convicted.
Many conservative lawyers have turned a
blind eye, because Stewart is regarded as a leftwing lawyer whom
they dislike. Only a few civil libertarians, such as Harvey
Silverglate, have pointed out that prosecutors cannot create
felonies by writing letters to attorneys. Stewart was convicted for
violating a prosecutor’s letter (technically, a Special
Administrative Measure). This should make it obvious even to the
blind that American democracy has lost all control over
law.
Federal officials have sensed the sea change in American
law: arbitrary actions and assertions by federal officials are
taking the place of statutory legislation. We saw an example
recently when the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA)
announced that news media covering the New Orleans hurricane story
were prohibited from taking pictures of the bodies of inhabitants
drowned when the levees failed. Nowhere is FEMA given authority to
override the First Amendment. Yet, FEMA officials saw no reason not
to issue its decree. Rome had one caesar. America has them
throughout the executive branch.
We see the same exercise of
arbitrary authority in break-ins by police into New Orleans homes in
order to confiscate legally owned firearms. No authority exists for
these violations of the Second Amendment. No authority exists for
the forceful removal of residents from non-damaged homes. Tyrannical
precedents are being established by these fantastic abuses of
government authority.
In the US today nothing stands in the
way of the arbitrary exercise of power by government. Federal courts
have acquiesced in unconstitutional detention policies. There is no
opposition party, and there is no media, merely huge conglomerates
or collections of federal broadcasting licenses, the owners of which
are afraid to displease the government.
The collapse of the
institutions that confine government to law and bind it with the
Constitution was sudden. The president previous to Bush was
impeached by the House for lying about a sexual affair. If we go
back to the 1970s, President Richard Nixon had the decency to resign
when it came to light that he had lied about when he first learned
of a minor burglary. Bush’s failures are far more serious and
numerous; yet, Bush has escaped accountability.
Polls show
that a majority of Americans have lost confidence in the Iraq war
and believe Bush did a poor job responding to flooded New Orleans.
Many Americans hope that these two massive failures have put Bush
back into the box of responsible behavior from which September 11
allowed him to escape. However, there is no indication that the Bush
administration sees any constraints placed on its behavior by these
failures.
The identical cronyism and corrupt government
contract practices, by which taxpayers’ money is used to reward
political contributors, so evident in Iraq, is now evident in New
Orleans.
Despite having been fought to a stalemate by a
few thousand insurgents in Iraq, the Bush administration continues
to issue thunderous threats to Syria and Iran.
To press
its fabricated case against Iran’s alleged weapons of mass
destruction program, the Bush administration is showing every
foreign diplomat it can corral an hour-long slide show titled, "A
History of Concealment and Deception." Wary foreigners are reminded
of the presentations about Iraq’s WMD and wonder who is guilty of
deception, Iran or the Bush administration.
Now that the war
in Iraq has established that US ground forces cannot easily prevail
against insurgency, the Bush administration is bringing new military
threats to the fore. The neocon orchestrated "Doctrine for Joint
Nuclear Operations" abandons the established doctrine that nuclear
weapons are last-resort options. The Bush administration is so
enamored of coercion that it is birthing the doctrine of preemptive
nuclear attack. US war doctrine is being altered to eliminate the
need for a large invasion force and to use "preventive nuclear
strikes" in its place.
Is this the face that the American
people want to present to the world? It is hard to imagine a greater
risk to America than to put the entire world on notice that every
country risks being nuked based on mere suspicion. By making nuclear
war permissible, the Bush administration is crossing the line that
divides civilized people from barbarians. The United States is
starting to acquire the image of Nazi Germany. Knowledgeable people
should have no trouble drawing up their own list of elements common
to both the Bush and Hitler regimes: the use of extraordinary lies
to justify military aggression; reliance on coercion and threats in
place of diplomacy; total belief in the virtue and righteousness of
one’s cause; the equating of factual objections or "reality-based"
analysis to treason; the redirection of patriotism from country to
leader; the belief that defeat resides in debate and a weakening of
will; refuge in delusion and denial when promised results don’t
materialize.
As Professor Claes Ryn made clear in his book,
America the Virtuous, the neoconservatives are neo-Jacobins. There
is nothing conservative about them. They are committed to the use of
coercion to impose their agenda. Their attitude is merciless toward
anyone in their way, whether fellow citizen or foreigner. "You are
with us or against us." For those on the receiving end, the Nazi and
Jacobin mentalities come to the same thing.
The Bush
administration has abandoned American principles. It is a Jacobin
regime. Woe to its citizens and the rest of the world.
Dr.
Roberts <paulcraigroberts@yahoo.com> is John M. Olin
Fellow at the Institute for Political Economy and Research Fellow at
the Independent Institute.
He is a former associate editor of the Wall Street Journal,
former contributing editor for National Review, and a former
assistant secretary of the U.S. Treasury. He is the co-author of The
Tyranny of Good Intentions.
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