-Caveat Lector-

http://www.truthout.com/02.13F.Real.War.htm
Amen to this!  -- Bill

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Peace at any cost is a Prelude to War!

The Real Undeclared War
by Jennifer Van Bergen
t r u t h o u t | February 12, 2002

We have been fighting, as we all know, an undeclared war against terrorists
in Afghanistan. Maybe that war is over, maybe not. But there is another
officially undeclared war going on. That is the war between truth and lies. A
war of principles.

I'm getting tired of this. So are many other citizens. I'm tired of frozen
smiles, averted eyes, eternal stalling and brazenly arrogant lies. I'm tired
of people who pat themselves on the back for being more clever and more
secretive about it than the next guy. I'm tired of hearing the canned
phrases: I'm just doing my job. It's our policy. I didn't know anything. I'm
not the one responsible. My answer to that is "That's what the Nazis said."

What is amazing about this epidemic avoidance of responsibility is that
everyone knows it and no one thinks its unusual. "That's the way politicians
are!" they say, shrugging their shoulders. That's the way government is.
That's the way lawyers are. That's the way business is. That's the way people
are.

OR, I hear people say that somehow THIS dishonesty is better than THAT
dishonesty. "Well, at least he didn't say ......." Fill in the blanks. Or I
hear that it's okay to be dishonest when you are lying for your country. Huh?
Didn't anyone tell these guys it's wrong to lie? There's a place for
circumspection, but the coverup habit seems to be a carryover from Cold War
spy days, and our acceptance of it is nearly blind.

Well, it may seem patriotic to some people to plunder their neighbors and the
environment for the betterment of big business -- I'm not just talking about
Enron here; I'm talking about our Administration -- but I know people who are
expatriating because they are so disillusioned and disgusted with what is
going on.

There is indeed a war going on. A war against terrorism. But the terrorism is
not only coming from Muslim extremists; it's coming from our own government.

A psychological form of terrorism is being perpetrated, not just against
foreign enemies or immigrants, but against average american citizens. Or
perhaps subversion is a better term for it. The subversion of an open
society, of open and reasoned discussion and debate, of cross-cultural input
and majority rule. Remember the First Amendment protest zones? No one with
signs protesting Bush was allowed within, what was it, a mile? two miles? of
Bush. (It was deemed a national security threat.) Remember the stay of the
recount? (Was a recount deemed a threat to national security, too?)

This subversion is being effected right beneath our eyes while our thoughts
are engaged in fighting, uh, well, terrorism.

It's a well-known scam actually. Let me tell you a little anecdote to
illustrate: once I went into a famous old pharmacy in Manhattan to buy a
lipstick. I put a bag of mine (not my handbag) on a stool and was looking at
lipsticks a few feet away when both the clerk and the guard started
chastising me never, NEVER to do that, never to leave my bag even for an
instant; it could be stolen. I thanked them, bought my lipstick and went
home. When I got home, I looked at the receipt and saw I had been charged
$7.00 plus tax for the lipstick. This is way beyond what I would ever pay for
lipstick.

Yes, there had been a theft, but not by someone looking to have the advantage
of my bag. The theft was by the pharmacy, the very people who had cautioned
me to be careful.

What happened here is simple: my attention was drawn away from the actual
imminent danger (theft of my money by the store) to an imagined danger (theft
of my bag by a passerby). Sure, I could've asked the price of the lipstick
before I bought it or looked at the register display when I paid, but even
though my bag was now at my side, I was not able to pay attention because I
was still distracted by the thought of what could have happened to my bag.

Mind you, I'm not suggesting that the pharmacy personnel did this to me on
purpose, or, worse, that they had a policy of doing this to customers. The
point is that when your attention is directed to one danger, you are less
likely to see another, more imminent and obvious danger.

Some people do know how to scam others this way, and have no qualms about
doing so. In fact, it is a matter of pride to many cutthroat businesspersons
to pull tricks like this. The practice is not limited to petty criminals; it
is almost the definition of white collar crime. These are people who
capitalize on the gray areas of law. At one time, bank, wire, and securities
fraud were gray areas. No laws covered these crimes until the 1930s.

Furthermore, a background of greed and intolerance is always good
justification for taking advantage of one's neighbors. The idea is we want
what we want and we think it is fine to take what we want, if we can. Those
are the rules of corporate government.

Okay, now back to the present undeclared war. After September 11th, Congress
and the President decided to declare war (without an official declaration, of
course) on al-Qaida. Since then, americans have witnessed (if we were only
looking) more erosion of democratic principles than ever before in american
history.

Notice that I say "democratic principles." The Constitution itself has not
yet been overthrown. The Bush Administration knows the difference.

Principles, vague things that they are, are easier to overturn than laws.
People have a hard time hanging onto principles. The ideas of free speech,
freedom of religion, separation of church and state, separation of powers,
governmental accountability, the rights to vote, to be free of unreasonable
searches and seizures, to not be compelled to testify against oneself, to due
process of law, and so on -- to most people, these are just so much smoke and
mirrors. Most people care only about what they can see in their own back
yard.

But principles are important and once they are ignored, forgotten, or
overridden, once people learn to stop thinking and questioning and demanding
their rights, it takes just a flick of the wrist to overturn the laws.

As I say, Bush knows this. There is not a move he or his people have made
that has breached this distinction.

Here, look at this one: under the pretext of equal protection, millions of
votes in the last election were thrown out.

Does it make any sense? No. In order to protect every person's right to vote,
you throw half their votes out? I don't think so.

Did the Supreme Court opinion breach a constitutional principle? Yes. It
certainly broke with all its own prior precedent, including that dictated by
the very Justices who made this decision. In other words, equal protection
was never given like this when it involved a black person's rights. Only if
you're Bush. The Justices knew this. They even said that their decision
applied only to this case and none other.

In terms of the principle of equal protection, clearly it no longer means
anything. It's gone. It never existed. Only if you're one of the boys.

But, the law? Did Bush's street-cleaners, the Supreme Court, violate or
overturn the law? Nope. At least not nominally We still purportedly have the
constitutional right of equal proection.

But, buried in the Supreme Court's opinion which put Bush into office is
Rehnquist's quiet statement that there is no federal right to vote. Huh? Did
you catch that? By Rehnquist's reasoning, the Justice's 5-4 decision in favor
of Bush's equal protection claim was a decision in favor of a nonexistent
right!

That is one example of overturning a principle in potential preparation for
overturning a law (which happens to be a constitutional law). Get americans
used to the idea that only the Magic Nine (similar, I guess, to Ocean's 11)
can say what rights we have, and eventually we'll accept that they can take
those rights away, too.

What next? Well, next was Energy Policy for the big boys and Enron. Some
securities laws were broken at Enron, for sure, but Bush and Cheney had
nothing to do with that. Then there was the tax cut. That was to stimulate
the economy, right? Lots of environmental protection laws rescinded or thrown
out. To increase oil production. Then September 11th and war on al-Qaida,
bombing Afghanistan. To protect our nation.

Do you wonder at the coincidences between Bush policies and some pretty big
disasters? Bush's hawkish attitude preceded the terrorist attack. His
promotion of energy deregulation preceded Enron's collapse. Either these
events were the result of some huge astrological convergences, some really
unusual degree of chance, tremendous stupidity, or we are being bamboozled.
Or maybe all of the above.

I do not happen to think Bush or his buddies are stupid. They simply know how
to capitalize on the gray areas. In any event, it's a good idea for americans
to keep in mind how the scam works and to remember to keep paying attention
to what is important.

So, what IS important?

You know, a few hundred years ago, everyone read about law. Everyone read Tom
Paine's "Common Sense" and "The Rights of Man." Everyone read what are now
known largely to historians as "The Federalist Papers," written mostly by
Alexander Hamilton and James Madison, which set forth the framework of and
reasons for the democratic/republican form of government. In a time when the
only means of transportation was by horse or sailing ship, when news was
spread largely by word of mouth, in a country of sparsely populated
wilderness dotted with a few cities here and there, which contained fewer
people than you would find in a small township nowadays, hundreds of
thousands of people read these books. Man, woman, and child

In 1809, remembering the american war for independence, a woman wrote her
sister: "What sacrifice would not an American .. at the earliest age have
made for so desirable an end [as liberty] -- young as I was (twelve years old
when the war began) the word Liberty continually sounding in my ears seemed
to convey an idea of everything that was desirable on earth - true that in
attaining it, I was to see every present comfort abandoned - "

Remember, that war was fought over taxes. Taxation without representation.
Taxation by the British Parliament of the american colonists, who were not
represented in Parliament.

So, the people of this country, who fought a war to obtain the right not to
be taxed without being represented in Parliament, now, according to the
Supreme Court, don't have the right to have their votes counted, and,
according to Chief Justice Rehnquist, no longer even have the right to vote.

The people who fought for the right to form their own government independent
of the mother country, now are told they don't have the right to know what
their president or vice-president are doing.

We are told that we only have the right to free speech in specially marked
zones.

We are told to look away, look for terrorists elsewhere, or even in our
midsts, but to ignore what our own government is doing.

We are told to abandon our democratic principles, while citing empty laws.

Are we still Americans? I wonder. Or have we been tricked out of remembering
our principles? Is not the fight for these principles the real undeclared
war?

Jennifer Van Bergen is t r u t h o u t Managing Editor and a contributing
writer.




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