Sunday, October 17, 2010

Permanent War of US NSS

COLD WAR, WAR ON DRUGS, WAR ON TERROR, CULTURE WAR, PERMANENT WAR from Cindy Sheehan 10-16-10
I got your Tweedledum and Tweedledee, right here, Preznit Change-O: Eh, I mean your "War of Terror" and your "War on Drugs," buddy. OK, so maybe I should have said "Tweedeledum" and Tweedledumber." But you're a big picture man. Don't sweat this small stuff! These guys are Siamese twins, separated at birth. Glenn Greenwald gets it: As he says, "Both wars rely upon cartoon depictions of Scary Villains (The Drug Kingpin, Mexican Cartels, the Terrorist Mastermind) to keep the population in a state of heightened fear and thus blind them to rational discourse. But both wars are not only complete failures in eradicating those villains, but they both do more to empower those very villains than any other single cause - the War on Drugs by ensuring that cartels' profits from the illegal drug trade remain sky-high, and the War on Terror by ensuring more and more support and recruits for anti-American extremists. And both, separately and together, endlessly erode basic American liberties by convincing a frightened public that they can Stay Safe only if they cede more and more power to the state. Many of the civil liberties erosions from the War on Terror have their genesis in the War on Drugs." Most important is that these two wars continue and will continue for reasons unrelated to their stated intents. In fact, both "wars" ensure an unlimited stream of $$$ into the private war-making industries which fuel them. Add in a political fear that officials have of being perceived as abandoning any war before it is "won," and these two unwinnable wars - unwinnable by design - seem destined to endure forever, or at least until some sort of major financial collapse simply permits them no longer.
Wow, Slick: It's the perfect scam! In an endless loop, these wars sustain and strengthen the very menaces which, miraculously, justify continuous escalation. These wars manufacture the very dangers they are supposedly designed to combat. Meanwhile, the industries which fight them become richer and richer. The political officials those industries own become more and more powerful. Brutal drug cartels monopolize an unimaginably profitable, no-competition industry, while Terrorists are continuously supplied - the perfect rationale for persuading huge numbers of otherwise unsympathetic people to join them or support them. Everyone wins - except ordinary citizens, who become poorer and poorer, more and more imprisoned, meeker and meeker, and less and less free. Damn, Preznit Change-O, you promised us change - and you sure gave it to us: strong and hard.

No comments:

Dick's Wars and Warming KPSQ Radio Editorials (#1-48)

Dick's Wars and Warming KPSQ Radio Editorials (#1-48)