What Wonders He Hath Wrought
The Emperor continues to deny that the Global War on Terra is a modern-day crusade against Islam, yet no one in the Middle East believes him, and with good cause. Here's an interesting bit of analysis from Oman's Al-Watan:
It's a grave situation when a powerful individual suffers a sense of insecurity, sees his strength withering away, feels incapable of self-defense and reacts by blindly striking out at anything and anyone. This only serves to increase the hostility felt by others against him. And such an individual often uses the power of the implied threats against him to strengthen his grip over others, in order to change the dynamics of relations so as to control them.
After the shock of the September 11 events, this is the prism through which we should observe the behavior of the United States under President Bush's administration.
America is now experiencing a period of grave concern to human rights groups, which fear that the administration is using the feeling of being threatened to alter the long-standing social contract between the people and their government. This will limit the rights of the public, enforcing the rule of the few - the ruling elite - over the people, in an attack that will sharply curtail civil liberties. When a government uses the judiciary against democracy itself, political action tends to go underground and embrace violence, leading to an increase in extremism and vandalism in society. Governments which follow this path use the sense of fear to justify repression on the pretext of providing security, although these governments themselves create the threat.
...The issue here - which human rights groups have had a great deal of trouble alerting the public to, even with the Internet - is that the administration is working to maintain fear and the sense of threat in order to enact laws restricting civil liberties. Practically speaking, this will alter the social contract and give free reign to the most powerful groups to perpetuate their own interests, and use others as cannon fodder in a conflict that they [the elite] created to justify their plans. Given the flaws of Muslim media and our inherent lack of knowledge about the way the media works in more open Western societies, it may be hard to understand how easy it is easy to charge, try and convict people in such an environment.
...The important point here is that the cells of neo-conservatives and Zionist Christians that tend to control the policies of the American administration, in the context of a "New American Century," aim to control the world through the targeting of Islam - a new enemy after the collapse of communism. Now they have not only succeeded in creating this new enemy, they have managed to create a society of perpetual insecurity which swings blindly at everything and anything in its path. [Emphasis added]
First, a bit of honesty: I have deliberately omitted sections of this article which contain pretty openly anti-semitic statements, much of which I believe to be untrue (e.g., many Jews stayed away from the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001 because they had been tipped off) because they detract from what otherwise is a pretty sound analysis. The fact that many in the Middle East still harbor such suspicions is a pretty good indication of how the Emperor has worsened things with respect to Israel and its neighbors instead of improving them.
What I find interesting (and embarrassing) is that the writer of the op-ed piece has so successfully pinpointed just exactly what is going on in this country. He nailed it. For many of us, the analysis isn't exactly new news, but it certainly hasn't been spelled out by any news outlet in this country, the alleged standard for a free press.
We have an election coming up, and the Republicans have already begun their rants that the Democrats are soft on security issues. When those issues are seen in the light of an analysis such as this, the GOP talking points are seen for what they are: smoke and mirrors. A little help in educating the populace from our vaunted news organizations might help.
It's a grave situation when a powerful individual suffers a sense of insecurity, sees his strength withering away, feels incapable of self-defense and reacts by blindly striking out at anything and anyone. This only serves to increase the hostility felt by others against him. And such an individual often uses the power of the implied threats against him to strengthen his grip over others, in order to change the dynamics of relations so as to control them.
After the shock of the September 11 events, this is the prism through which we should observe the behavior of the United States under President Bush's administration.
America is now experiencing a period of grave concern to human rights groups, which fear that the administration is using the feeling of being threatened to alter the long-standing social contract between the people and their government. This will limit the rights of the public, enforcing the rule of the few - the ruling elite - over the people, in an attack that will sharply curtail civil liberties. When a government uses the judiciary against democracy itself, political action tends to go underground and embrace violence, leading to an increase in extremism and vandalism in society. Governments which follow this path use the sense of fear to justify repression on the pretext of providing security, although these governments themselves create the threat.
...The issue here - which human rights groups have had a great deal of trouble alerting the public to, even with the Internet - is that the administration is working to maintain fear and the sense of threat in order to enact laws restricting civil liberties. Practically speaking, this will alter the social contract and give free reign to the most powerful groups to perpetuate their own interests, and use others as cannon fodder in a conflict that they [the elite] created to justify their plans. Given the flaws of Muslim media and our inherent lack of knowledge about the way the media works in more open Western societies, it may be hard to understand how easy it is easy to charge, try and convict people in such an environment.
...The important point here is that the cells of neo-conservatives and Zionist Christians that tend to control the policies of the American administration, in the context of a "New American Century," aim to control the world through the targeting of Islam - a new enemy after the collapse of communism. Now they have not only succeeded in creating this new enemy, they have managed to create a society of perpetual insecurity which swings blindly at everything and anything in its path. [Emphasis added]
First, a bit of honesty: I have deliberately omitted sections of this article which contain pretty openly anti-semitic statements, much of which I believe to be untrue (e.g., many Jews stayed away from the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001 because they had been tipped off) because they detract from what otherwise is a pretty sound analysis. The fact that many in the Middle East still harbor such suspicions is a pretty good indication of how the Emperor has worsened things with respect to Israel and its neighbors instead of improving them.
What I find interesting (and embarrassing) is that the writer of the op-ed piece has so successfully pinpointed just exactly what is going on in this country. He nailed it. For many of us, the analysis isn't exactly new news, but it certainly hasn't been spelled out by any news outlet in this country, the alleged standard for a free press.
We have an election coming up, and the Republicans have already begun their rants that the Democrats are soft on security issues. When those issues are seen in the light of an analysis such as this, the GOP talking points are seen for what they are: smoke and mirrors. A little help in educating the populace from our vaunted news organizations might help.
posted by Diane at 8:02 AM
2 Comments:
good catch, diane. And I appreciate your posting it.
The old piece of how far a democracy should go outside its own laws to protect itself has grown in to something new - manipulating a sense of fear to introduce unwarranted extra-judicial controls and intolerance of those who object (etc.).
On reflection, I suppose this is not so new - many states have played the game of diverting public interest from the domestic scene to an international one to hang on to power ... Hitler, India ... and now the US, Iran and the UK.
(Dig a little about what is happening in the UK ...you would be very surprised).
What I find difficult to tolerate is a combination of gung-ho US extra-territorial intervention and a lack of willingness to be held accountable by bodies such as international courts or to abide by treaties such as the Geneva Convention. All this seems particularly unpalatable in the context of the liberal civil and other rights so elegantly enshrined in the US Constitution.
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