When an Empire Goes Wrong

Let me be clear about something, I was very happy to see Saddam Hussein removed from power in Iraq. However, I think the cost of that removal may be far more damaging than Saddam. This is the fault of the Bush administration, however, and was not built into the removal. And when I say cost I'm not speaking purely in terms of the economic resources. I'm talking about the lives lost. I'm talking about the way the occupation has been turned into a war profiteering cash cow for friends of the Bush administration, doing more damage to the integrity of our national government than any act by any administration in my lifetime. I'm talking about the damage to civil liberties and individual freedom inside the United States. The Bush administration has done more damage to the American system of values than anything that bin Laden could have dreamed of doing directly. I'm talking about the transformation of the American Empire, which could have been a positive influence on democracy, human rights, and individual freedom, into Dick Cheney's Dark Side Empire of paranoia, torture, suppression of individual rights, and corruption.

By the way, did you know that the President and Vice President of Iraq asked President Bush to set a deadline for leaving their country? Also, did you know that Iraq's National Security Adviser Mowaffik Al-Rubaie stated that "Iraqis now see foreign troops as occupiers rather than the liberators, and said that their removal will strengthen the fledgling government by legitimizing it in the eyes of the Iraqi people." (This information was provided to me by a trusted source, but you should double check it.) We are occupiers. We need to recognize that. Otherwise we will never understand the events that are likely to come from our current behavior. We'll just think people are being irrational for attacking us. This is another cost of the manner in which the Bush administration has turned the invasion and removal of Saddam Hussein into the invasion, occupation, and exploitation of Iraq (and simultaneous theft of public funds from U.S. taxpayers).

Speaking of the theft of public funds --- I believe that when governments seize the hard earned value created by citizens (in the form of taxes) then this money/value should be treated as precious and used only in ways that meet the needs of the citizenry and do so in an efficient manner (with little wastage). Corruption is quite the opposite of this. The current administration is unafraid to channel tax dollars to their cronies, even engaging in war profiteering, which is one of the most vile forms of corruption. (In general economic terms, making war profitable creates incentives to make more wars, even creating a perpetual "war on terror" or some other Orwellian scheme of the same ilk. This is magnified when the profits flow to members of the executive branch, their families, and/or their close friends and cronies.) It is not difficult to get the impression that this administration's policies are primarily designed to channel tax monies to cronies in the military-industrial complex (Eisenhower's phrase), the oil industry, and the related parasitic firms who provide "services" for the Imperial war bureaucracy, in particular Halliburton. In order to protect their dishonesty (including the lies used to cover up their theft of tax dollars), there has been a persistent attack on transparency (on the rights of the press to expose what this administration is doing or the public's right to know about their behavior). By using the euphemism "war on terror," the usual role of the press in exposing the behavior of the government (knowledge that is fundamental to democracy), the administration turns normal press activity into a "threat to national security," even as their own members "leak" information on CIA operatives in order to get some political payback for an ambassador's failure to go along with the aministration's lies. They do not have to follow constitutional guarantees of freedom of the press, free speech, etc. for the same reason. Academics whose political beliefs are not favored by these thugs are kept from even entering the U.S., further stifling the free flow of information required to have democracy.

And what about this keystone terrorists thing in Miami? The administration is now trying to create terrorists to provide further fodder for their anti-freedom legislation and executive actions (including illegal executive actions). I'd love to be the attorney for these guys. Agents for the government went to them and suggested they make an arrangement with al-Qaeda, that al-Qaeda would provide them funding and arms, and even provided them with cameras to take the photos that are alleged evidence of their terrorist intents. These were not very bright individuals, but individuals who wanted to do something to change their lives and the lives of the people they care about, people living in poor communities that have been cast out as trash by the neo-conservative dominated federal government. The federal agent offered them an imaginary opportunity to make something happen (or perhaps he was just offering them money and resources to change things, even if in a manner that is illogical and potentially self-defeating). Would they have actually carried the terrorism out? Probably not without further encouragement from the agent provocateur. And that is the point (even if the federal prosecutors manage to paper over the entrapment -- after all, most of the federal judiciary are fellow travelers). This is another symptom of something seriously wrong in this country. A lot of people have accepted all sorts of undemocratic, uncivil actions by their government, rather than be outraged and rising up in protest. Torture, secret prisons, incarceration without habeas corpus, the growth of big brother powers: At some point, someone should ask --- what are we trying to protect if we are willing to give up freedom. I suspect bin Laden is quite pleased with this administration's behavior.