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NORTH COAST TIMES E A G L E , AUGTEMBER 2002
9/11 NOW
FROM PAGE ONE
policies have made entire populations desperate and have
consequently ravaged our own security Terrorism has risen
from our military arms and financial support of repressive and
compliant militarist regimes in Latin America, Asia and the
Middle East
The Bush administration has used the exigency of war
to intimidate criticism of its rape of the environment and disinte
gration of the always tenuous social fabric to reestablish the old
federalist plutocracy of Alexander Hamilton Hamilton was truly
fanatical in his belief that only the privileged are fit to rule, men
of wealth and property. The rest are to be in their shadows, act
out their orders — legally obligated to be useful to their betters.
Since 9/11 the War on Terrorism has been used to
persuade Americans that it is unpatriotic to defend their political
and civil liberties. Attorney General Ashcroft says anybody
complaining about loss of civil liberties and use of military
tribunals is only aiding and abetting terrorists. “Your tactics only
encourage terrorists,” Ashcroft said of people questioning the
loss of civil liberties, claiming such criticism vitiates the
commitment of “peace loving peoples" against terrorism. (The
Bushies sound like old communists in their persistent use of
terms like “peace loving peoples" and “the freedom loving
peoples of the world ")
The USA Patriot Act, which was introduced to Congress
a week after 9/11 and made into law October 26 — so quickly a
suspicion is that it was drawn up before 9/11 — expands eaves
dropping by police as well as expanded wire tapping and e-mail
intercepts. Public records are to be sealed and anti-terrorism
proceedings are secret. Antiterrorism laws are tightened and
states would have stiffer penalties, longer prison terms and
looser death penalty restrictions.
The Homeland Security Department that has been
accorded cabinet status plans to set up a regional ‘homeland’
military command, which would subdivide the nation into much
tighter military districts with troops such as national guardsmen
at all airports and borders and more or less policing society —
perhaps more like oversighting domestic police even though
the military is not allowed to directly participate in civil law
enforcement. But the Homeland Security Department is looking
for ways to subvert that prohibition which is trivialized as super
fluous yet is a fundamental taproot of our creed. Huey Long
said that when fascism comes to the USA it will be wrapped
in the American flag
On June 1, George Bush told the 2002 West Point
graduating class that the U.S. cannot wait for terrorists to attack
the homeland again; we must take the war to the “enemy,” he
told the young new officers who most likely would be among the
troops sent to the current hot button “Axis of Evil,” Iraq
Bush said the U.S. needs a “muscular foreign policy”
and announced a new' policy of preemption — precipatory
response to envisioned danger. “Be ready for preemptive
attacks to preserve our freedoms and our lives,” Bush said,
pushing his 'Strike First’ policy.
However, if the U.S. puts a preemption policy into effect
(after abandoning such a policy), it might stimulate the same
behavior by members of the ‘Axis of Evil’ as well as between
nuclear powers India and Pakistan.
The USA is engaged in two wars simultaneously, the
War on Terrorism and the War on Drugs — although they
might also be regarded as a two-front war in two hemispheres
with guaranteed high budgets for perhaps perpetuity. The
Military/lndustrial Mafia has a dual purpose for its addiction to
our tax money. And people like Senator Trent Lott who are
always looking for ways to restrain the rights of the common folk
to enhance the authority and privilege of their elite patrons have
a causa bella to reinstitute the national security state that lang
uished the past decade of relative peace and prosperity. It just
might end up being the old Cold War all over again.
We have committed ourselves to war when it has
been unnecessary. A grievous crime was committed against
the USA, but not one that was undeserved or should have
been so unexpected We have lived a long time in a false
bubble that whatever we do elsewhere in the world will not in
similar measure reach us Now, at a moment we should seek
justice we instead make our response to a crime into a war, and
HAXE8
ROGER HA YES
in a year we have already murdered at least as many innocents
without trial and certainly without justice as died on 9/11.
We claim these deaths are by accident and not intent,
which our apologists (who are also the perpetuators) assure us
is much different than the planned murders of 9/11 — but war is
murder on a mass scale and we have willingly allowed ourselves
to be led to war with hardly any resistance: so these murders are
at our door, we are as guilty as terrorists.
This is the responsibility of free citizens in a democracy.
If we are at war to defend democracy we had better ensure the
responsibilities of a democracy in its conduct, in other words we
must firmly declare individually and collectively the war’s limits
as well as its targets
It is ironic the USA refused to fully support the world
court, our leaders contradicting themselves that so-called
peacekeepers’ cannot be prosecuted for war crimes: they
manipulate the situation in Yugoslavia as a cover for actions in
the equally so-called war on terrorism’ — and in the soon to be
assault on Iraq that very few voices in America have been
raised to argue about or discuss: we seem to passively stand
aside as the war machine gears up almost autonomously to
invade Baghdad
War demands action as well as spectacle to maintain
its momentum on the field and support at home. War also limits
the prerogatives available to attain the real justice an armed
crusade seldom provides.
Our Achilles tendon has been exposed by the attack
upon it on 9/11. And like Achilles we will never eliminate its
vulnerability to attack and harm. Only if we actually accept
citizenship of the world and use our extraordinary power as it
was intended to be used will we protect our vulnerability that is
exacerbated by the way we presently treat the rest of the world
as either friend or foe. We act on prerogatives of power every
would-be world conqueror has eventually been doomed for
having utilized — generally leaving a legacy of waste and ruin
as a monument
SHALLON
NUCLEAR DISCONNECT
‘Prevention of nuclear war is a concern that embraces
all people of all beliefs, political persuasions, colors,
creeds and races.. It is time for people to rise to their
full moral and spiritual height, to take the world on their
shoulders and to say ‘I will save the earth'. Each person
can be as powerful as the most powerful person who
ever lived."
~DR. HELEN CALDICOTT
I am just reading that many of our United States
Senators are aggressively promoting the development of
nuclear weapons to use on earth and in space, and that our
President — with the Senators from where the 'Crusader’
weapon is being made — is threatening to override any
veto about the continued production of the Crusader, which
even the Pentagon says is a waste of money
But remember, weapons of mass destruction create
family wage jobs! The Senators are hacking away at the
remnants of protection for birds and plants and other living
things against the destruction caused by war games and
weapons testing. Meanwhile another chunk of an iceberg
three times the size of Manhattan has broken off and is
floating away in the ever-warmer sea, just like the one the
size of Rhode Island did last month
Is there a disconnect here?
Do the actions of our elected representatives mean
the American people want a nuclear war? Do the people think
nuclear war would be good for business? How do the people
think it might be profitable for their children and grandchildren?
Does anyone wonder what the world will look like after nuclear
war? Does anyone care - or are we all too busy watching
television, getting fatter and fatter and more depressed eating
processed junk purchased with hard-earned dollars from
corrupt multinational tycoons, frittering our lives away driving
to the shiny store, stocking up on real cheap stuff made by
people who make a dollar a day and live in cardboard boxes?
What is the legacy we are leaving for the next generation, not
to mention the 7th?
-SUSAN SKINNER
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