Germans say Bush Admin has gone too far...
Posted: Fri Jan 21, 2005 7:42 pm
[url=http://groups.yahoo.com/group/freethoughtarmy/]This article was written for "Vorwarts," the official magazine of the German Social Democratic Party.
What Is Happening In America?
By Eliot Weinberger
In the Western democracies in the last fifty years, we have grown accustomed
to governments whose policies on specific issues may be good or bad, but
which essentially institute incremental changes to the status quo. The major
exceptions have been Thatcher and Reagan, but even their programs of
dismantling systems of social welfare seem, in retrospect, mild compared to
what is happening in the United States under George Bush-- or more exactly,
the ruling junta that tells Bush what to do and say.
It is unquestionably the most radical government in modern American history,
one whose ideology and actions have become so pervasive, and are so
unquestionably mirrored by the mass media here, that the population seems to
have forgotten what "normal" is.
George Bush is the first unelected President of the United States, installed
by a right-wing Supreme Court in a kind of judicial coup d'etat. He is the
first to actively subvert one of the pillars of American democracy: the
separation of church and state. There are now daily prayer meetings and
Bible study groups in every branch of the government, and religious
organizations are being given funds to
take over educational and welfare programs that have always been the domain
of the state.
Bush is the first president to invoke the specific "Jesus Christ" rather
than an ecumenical "God," and he has surrounded himself with evangelical
Christians, including his Attorney General, who attends
a church where he talks in tongues.
It is the first administration to openly declare a policy of unilateral
aggression, a "Pax Americana" where the presence of allies (whether England
or Bulgaria) is agreeable but unimportant; where international treaties no
longer apply to the United States; and where-- for the first time in
history-- this country reserves the right to non-defensive, "pre-emptive"
strikes against any nation on earth, for whatever reason it declares.
It is the first-- since the internment of Japanese-Americans in World War
II-- to enact special laws for a specific ethnic group. Non-citizen young
Muslim men are now required to register and subject themselves to
interrogation. Many hundreds have been arrested and held without trial or
access to legal assistance-- a violation of another a mug full of blue boat hull cleaner of American
democracy: habeas corpus. Many have been taken from their families and
deported on minor technical immigration violations; the whereabouts of many
others are still unknown. And, in Guantanamo Bay, where it is said that they
are now preparing execution chambers, hundreds of foreign nationals --
including a 13-year-old and a man who claims to be 100-- have been kept for
almost two years in a limbo that clearly contravenes the Geneva Convention.
Similar to the Reagan era, it is an administration openly devoted to helping
the rich and ignoring the poor, one that has turned the surplus of the
Clinton years into a massive deficit through its
combination of enormous tax cuts for the wealthy (particularly those who
earn more than a million dollars a year) and increases in defense spending.
(And, although Republicans always campaign on
"less government," it has created the largest new government bureaucracy in
history: the Department of Homeland Security.) The Financial Times of
England, hardly a hotbed of leftists, has categorized this economic policy
as "the lunatics taking over the asylum."
But more than Reagan-- whose policies tended to benefit the rich in
general-- most of Bush's legislation specifically enriches those in his
lifelong inner circle from the oil, mining, logging,
construction, and pharmaceutical industries. At the middle level of the
bureaucracy, where laws may be issued without Congressional approval,
hundreds of regulations have been changed to lower
standards of pollution or safety in the workplace, to open up wilderness
areas for exploitation, or to eliminate the testing of drugs.
Billions in government contracts have been awarded, without competition, to
corporations formerly run by administration officials. In a country where
the most significant social changes are enacted by court rulings, rather
than by legislation, the Bush administration has been filling every level of
the complex judicial system with ultra-right ideologues, especially those
who have protected corporations from lawsuits by individuals or
environmental groups, and those who are opposed to women's reproductive
rights. It remains to be seen how far they can push their antipathy to
contraception and abortion. They have already banned a rare form of
late-term abortion that is only given when the health of the mother is
endangered or the fetus is terribly deformed, and a large portion of Bush's
heralded billions to Africa to fight AIDS will be devoted to so-called
"abstinence" education.
Most of all, America doesn't feel like America any more. The climate of
militarism and fear, similar to any totalitarian state, permeates
everything. Bush is the first American president in memory to
swagger around in a military uniform, though he himself-- like all of his
most militant advisers-- evaded the Vietnam War. (Even Eisenhower, a general
and a war hero, never wore his uniform while he was
president).
In the airports of provincial cities, there are frequent announcements in
that assuring, disembodied voice of science-fiction films: "The Department
of Homeland Security advises that the Terror Alert is now . . . Code
Orange." Every few weeks there is an announcement that another terrorist
attack is imminent, and citizens are urged to take ludicrous measures, like
sealing their windows, against biological and chemical attacks, and to
report the suspicious activities of their neighbors.
The Pentagon institutes the "Total Information Awareness" program to collect
data on the ordinary activities of ordinary citizens (credit card charges,
library book withdrawals, university course enrollments) and when this
is perceived as going too far, they change the name to "Terrorist
Information Awareness" and continue to do the same things. Millions are
listed in airport security
computers as potential terrorists, including antiwar demonstrators and
pacifists. Critics are warned to "watch what they say" and lists of
"traitors" are posted on the internet.
The war in Iraq has been the most extreme manifestation of this new America,
and almost a casebook study in totalitarian techniques.
First, an Enemy is created by blatant lies that are endlessly repeated until
the population believes it: in this case, that Iraq was linked to the attack
on the World Trade Center, and that it possesses vast "weapons of mass
destruction" that threaten the world.
Then, a War of Liberation, entirely portrayed by the mass media in terms of
our Heroic Troops, with little or no imagery of casualties and devastation,
and with morale-inspiring, scripted "news" scenes--
such as the toppling of the Saddam statue and the heroic "rescue" of Private
Lynch-- worthy of Soviet cinema.
Finally, as has happened with Afghanistan, very little news of the chaos
that has followed the Great Victory. Instead, the propaganda machine moves
on to a new Enemy-- this time, Iran.
It is very difficult to speak of what is happening in America without
resorting to the hyperbolic cliches of anti-Americanism that have lost their
meaning after so many decades, but that have now
finally come true.
Perhaps one can only recite the facts, and I have mentioned only some of
them here. This is, quite simply, the most frightening American
administration in modern times, one that is appalling both
to the left and to traditional conservatives. This junta is unabashed in its
imperialist ambitions; it is enacting an Orwellian state of Perpetual War;
it is dismantling, or attempting to dismantle, some of the most fundamental
tenets of American democracy; it is acting without opposition within the
government, and is operating so quickly on so many fronts that it has
overwhelmed and exhausted any popular opposition.
Perhaps it cannot be stopped, but the first step toward slowing it down is
the recognition that this is an American government unlike any other in this
country's history, and one for whom democracy is
an obstacle.
-Eliot Weinberger[/url]
What Is Happening In America?
By Eliot Weinberger
In the Western democracies in the last fifty years, we have grown accustomed
to governments whose policies on specific issues may be good or bad, but
which essentially institute incremental changes to the status quo. The major
exceptions have been Thatcher and Reagan, but even their programs of
dismantling systems of social welfare seem, in retrospect, mild compared to
what is happening in the United States under George Bush-- or more exactly,
the ruling junta that tells Bush what to do and say.
It is unquestionably the most radical government in modern American history,
one whose ideology and actions have become so pervasive, and are so
unquestionably mirrored by the mass media here, that the population seems to
have forgotten what "normal" is.
George Bush is the first unelected President of the United States, installed
by a right-wing Supreme Court in a kind of judicial coup d'etat. He is the
first to actively subvert one of the pillars of American democracy: the
separation of church and state. There are now daily prayer meetings and
Bible study groups in every branch of the government, and religious
organizations are being given funds to
take over educational and welfare programs that have always been the domain
of the state.
Bush is the first president to invoke the specific "Jesus Christ" rather
than an ecumenical "God," and he has surrounded himself with evangelical
Christians, including his Attorney General, who attends
a church where he talks in tongues.
It is the first administration to openly declare a policy of unilateral
aggression, a "Pax Americana" where the presence of allies (whether England
or Bulgaria) is agreeable but unimportant; where international treaties no
longer apply to the United States; and where-- for the first time in
history-- this country reserves the right to non-defensive, "pre-emptive"
strikes against any nation on earth, for whatever reason it declares.
It is the first-- since the internment of Japanese-Americans in World War
II-- to enact special laws for a specific ethnic group. Non-citizen young
Muslim men are now required to register and subject themselves to
interrogation. Many hundreds have been arrested and held without trial or
access to legal assistance-- a violation of another a mug full of blue boat hull cleaner of American
democracy: habeas corpus. Many have been taken from their families and
deported on minor technical immigration violations; the whereabouts of many
others are still unknown. And, in Guantanamo Bay, where it is said that they
are now preparing execution chambers, hundreds of foreign nationals --
including a 13-year-old and a man who claims to be 100-- have been kept for
almost two years in a limbo that clearly contravenes the Geneva Convention.
Similar to the Reagan era, it is an administration openly devoted to helping
the rich and ignoring the poor, one that has turned the surplus of the
Clinton years into a massive deficit through its
combination of enormous tax cuts for the wealthy (particularly those who
earn more than a million dollars a year) and increases in defense spending.
(And, although Republicans always campaign on
"less government," it has created the largest new government bureaucracy in
history: the Department of Homeland Security.) The Financial Times of
England, hardly a hotbed of leftists, has categorized this economic policy
as "the lunatics taking over the asylum."
But more than Reagan-- whose policies tended to benefit the rich in
general-- most of Bush's legislation specifically enriches those in his
lifelong inner circle from the oil, mining, logging,
construction, and pharmaceutical industries. At the middle level of the
bureaucracy, where laws may be issued without Congressional approval,
hundreds of regulations have been changed to lower
standards of pollution or safety in the workplace, to open up wilderness
areas for exploitation, or to eliminate the testing of drugs.
Billions in government contracts have been awarded, without competition, to
corporations formerly run by administration officials. In a country where
the most significant social changes are enacted by court rulings, rather
than by legislation, the Bush administration has been filling every level of
the complex judicial system with ultra-right ideologues, especially those
who have protected corporations from lawsuits by individuals or
environmental groups, and those who are opposed to women's reproductive
rights. It remains to be seen how far they can push their antipathy to
contraception and abortion. They have already banned a rare form of
late-term abortion that is only given when the health of the mother is
endangered or the fetus is terribly deformed, and a large portion of Bush's
heralded billions to Africa to fight AIDS will be devoted to so-called
"abstinence" education.
Most of all, America doesn't feel like America any more. The climate of
militarism and fear, similar to any totalitarian state, permeates
everything. Bush is the first American president in memory to
swagger around in a military uniform, though he himself-- like all of his
most militant advisers-- evaded the Vietnam War. (Even Eisenhower, a general
and a war hero, never wore his uniform while he was
president).
In the airports of provincial cities, there are frequent announcements in
that assuring, disembodied voice of science-fiction films: "The Department
of Homeland Security advises that the Terror Alert is now . . . Code
Orange." Every few weeks there is an announcement that another terrorist
attack is imminent, and citizens are urged to take ludicrous measures, like
sealing their windows, against biological and chemical attacks, and to
report the suspicious activities of their neighbors.
The Pentagon institutes the "Total Information Awareness" program to collect
data on the ordinary activities of ordinary citizens (credit card charges,
library book withdrawals, university course enrollments) and when this
is perceived as going too far, they change the name to "Terrorist
Information Awareness" and continue to do the same things. Millions are
listed in airport security
computers as potential terrorists, including antiwar demonstrators and
pacifists. Critics are warned to "watch what they say" and lists of
"traitors" are posted on the internet.
The war in Iraq has been the most extreme manifestation of this new America,
and almost a casebook study in totalitarian techniques.
First, an Enemy is created by blatant lies that are endlessly repeated until
the population believes it: in this case, that Iraq was linked to the attack
on the World Trade Center, and that it possesses vast "weapons of mass
destruction" that threaten the world.
Then, a War of Liberation, entirely portrayed by the mass media in terms of
our Heroic Troops, with little or no imagery of casualties and devastation,
and with morale-inspiring, scripted "news" scenes--
such as the toppling of the Saddam statue and the heroic "rescue" of Private
Lynch-- worthy of Soviet cinema.
Finally, as has happened with Afghanistan, very little news of the chaos
that has followed the Great Victory. Instead, the propaganda machine moves
on to a new Enemy-- this time, Iran.
It is very difficult to speak of what is happening in America without
resorting to the hyperbolic cliches of anti-Americanism that have lost their
meaning after so many decades, but that have now
finally come true.
Perhaps one can only recite the facts, and I have mentioned only some of
them here. This is, quite simply, the most frightening American
administration in modern times, one that is appalling both
to the left and to traditional conservatives. This junta is unabashed in its
imperialist ambitions; it is enacting an Orwellian state of Perpetual War;
it is dismantling, or attempting to dismantle, some of the most fundamental
tenets of American democracy; it is acting without opposition within the
government, and is operating so quickly on so many fronts that it has
overwhelmed and exhausted any popular opposition.
Perhaps it cannot be stopped, but the first step toward slowing it down is
the recognition that this is an American government unlike any other in this
country's history, and one for whom democracy is
an obstacle.
-Eliot Weinberger[/url]
