Posted by panch from pool0365.cvx20-bradley.dialup.earthlink.net (209.179.251.110) on Tuesday, August 27, 2002 at 10:43AM :
Friends can be a nuisance. They correct you, they expect you to be your best, they know you, know your weaknesses as well as strengths. Without external enemies Israel and the United States would be in deep trouble today.
Enemies are good for you...they bring you together in common defense...they keep you preoccupied...they allow you to paper over your failures and weaknesses cause you must be "shtrong" and unified in the face of their attacks...their very presence can silence opposition to your leadership, can silence those who would ask a question or two.
With enemies like we have...who needs friends?
Turning every Latin peasant who wanted a fair shake from United Fruit, AT&T, mining and other business groups, into a Communist meant we were free to kill him and his family. We managed to find brutal thugs who would cooperate with us in the rape and pillage of their own people, thugs we expected to skim the top of the aid money we sent them...people who could take the heat and not give a damn...people who were our proxies, getting our job done for us. But first we had to turn the poor of latin America into "godless" commies...too evil and twisted to "count".
It was all bullshit...all of it. In their zeal they turned on any dissenters at home...created that well named arm of Congress...The House Un American Activities Committee (HUAC)...whose job it was to keep us "safe" by gutting our Civil Liberties...by marginalizing and jailing and ruining Americans who dared question policy. How appropriate the name turned out to be...it was the Committee that was Un American...not the people they hounded. Those days are all but repudiated now...apologies were issued...but they got the job done then.
Some day there will apologies issued for what is taking place right now. It's the same old thing, with Muslim Terrorists taking the place of godless commies. But the aim is the same...to silence dissent, to deflect criticism, to extract a carte blanche from the American people to "protect" them...protect them from nothing more than our own greedy business-politicians.
No Arab or Muslim ever did a damn thing to the United States...no Latin peasant ever did either...and the Vietnamese did not attack any American battleship. We must be insecure as a people...secretly plagued with doubt, guilt ridden into believing people hate us and want us dead because we know at some level we have robbed them, given them good cause. It takes almost nothing to convince us that someone has it out for us...it comes not at all as a shock to hear it.
The real difference this time around is that an actual attack against us was made...this time we would need such a thing before we could be gotten to march in lock step goose step. Who dares question after 9/11?
Thank god many do. Barabara Lee of Oakland was the ONLY member of the House to not go along with Bush and the stampede...and she was respected by enough of her constituents. Eventually we will smell this rat, though we will never go all the way and accept the fact that Bush knew damn well something was coming...had been working on it for years...the people around him who seemed almost trained to go into action, once the thing happened.
We don't ever remind ourselves that another president lied to us and our Congress in order to get us into another war...that 55,000 Americans were sent to their deaths...for nothing except corporate profits and power grabs. The only thing new here is this time there was finally an actual attack on us...at home. That and the Religious Right working with the Bushes to undermine our Civil liberties...hoping to take us back to the Dark Ages.
Parlous times indeed...but made to order by our own leadership. Bush seized office...it was a silent, legal coup. His presidency was illegitimate from the start...there would have been no other way for the Repubs to get the White House...even with Gore for opposition they had to cheat. Bush is in no position to lecture anyone about Democracy, what does he know about it...or to demand fiscal responsibility and zero tolerance from businessmen who did the same thing he did...who wrote the damn legislation themselves so they could pull off their heist. But we don't like to think about these things too much...especially not with Arabs raining down on our heads.
Thank god there is a Saddam and an Osama...if not, we would have to create them...and we know how.
-- panch
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