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Washington
is just full of
"confidential" memoranda that, somehow, get published in the
newspapers; they waft down the boulevards of the Imperial
City like snowflakes in a storm, until the city is knee-deep
in them.
There
was Rummy's supposedly super-secret missive
expressing something less than breezy optimism about the war
he and his neocon buddies insisted
on starting.
There
was the memo from Defense Department official Douglas
Feith, in which the
neocons "leaked" to the Weekly Standard yet more of
their completely bogus "intelligence" as "proof" that
Saddam and Osama were in cahoots all along. The Defense Department
denied
it, although we doubt that author Stephen Hayes and
Weekly Standard editor Bill
Kristol will be hauled into court a la
Dan
Ellsberg and the New York Times.
Now
we have an internal FBI memo, in which the Bureau admits to
an ongoing effort to spy
on the antiwar movement. Quelle surprise! I'm shocked,
shocked – not!
You'll
note that all of these "leaks" somehow benefited the authors
of these memoranda: Rumsfield got to distance
himself from the unfolding
disaster of Iraq-nam. Feith got to recycle warmed over
disinformation from the Office of Special
Plans, which had such a large supply of lies left over
when the war "ended": the Weekly Standard must've gotten
them at fire sale prices.
And
the War Party certainly benefits from the news that the feds
are keeping a close eye on the antiwar movement – after all,
who wants their name to be on a government list of possible
"extremist elements," as the memo puts it, who might be "planning
violence"?
Oh,
man, you wouldn't believe what those antiwar "extremists"
are up to! According to our intrepid G-men:
"Protesters
have sometimes used 'training camps' to rehearse for demonstrations,
the Internet to raise money and gas masks to defend against
tear gas. The memorandum analyzed lawful activities like recruiting
demonstrators, as well as illegal activities like using fake
documentation to get into a secured site."
Yikes!
Not training camps?! Visions of wild-eyed anarchists
learning how to make Molotov cocktails dance in the head,
but the reality is much more prosaic: it's just a bunch of
hippies playing touchy-feely games
with each other, and training in techniques
designed to minimize violence. So don't get too scared.
And this business of getting into "secured facilities" is
supposed to mean, what? Trying
to get into the American Enterprise Institute auditorium,
no doubt.
And
what about this business of using the Internet to raise money? I
mean, how subversive can you get? Of course, the way the government
raises money is to put a gun to your head and say:
pay up – or else! We, on the other hand, have to persuade
people to donate. That the lords of Washington can't comprehend
the concept of voluntary contributions is profoundly weird,
yet all too believable.
This
business of "recruiting demonstrators" may seem innocuous,
even harmless, but the question is: recruited for what?
Under the grossly
misnamed "Patriot" Act, any demonstration where a fight
breaks out can be classified as a "terrorist activity" – and
all the participants and organizers rounded up as "enemy
combatants." The legal groundwork
for wholesale repression has certainly been laid.
While
this may seem unlikely in the present context, if only because
of the outcry that would ensue, keep in mind the latest
pronouncement of General Tommy Franks, until recently
the commander of U.S. forces in Iraq, who predicted that a
military dictatorship would be the inevitable result of another
terrorist attack on U.S. soil:
"It
means the potential of a weapon of mass destruction and a
terrorist, massive, casualty-producing event somewhere in
the Western world – it may be in the United States of
America – that causes our population to question our
own Constitution and to begin to militarize our country in
order to avoid a repeat of another mass, casualty-producing
event. Which in fact, then begins to unravel the fabric of
our Constitution. Two steps, very, very important."
As
the country turns against the war, and the protest movement
gains momentum, what else could stop a colossal defeat of
the neoconservative War Party but General Franks' chilling
scenario?
The
whole point of the neocon project is the
overthrow of our Old
Republic, and the creation of a New
Rome: another 9/11 would certainly provide them with a
pretext to take action to accomplish their goal. Their loyalty
is to the Empire, an entity that has yet to be fully born,
and if the birth of an American Imperium has to be helped
along by a catastrophe of historic proportions – perhaps one
that dwarfs 9/11 in its horrific severity – well, then, so
be it. So what if they have to destroy part of the country
in order to "save" the whole nation from what they regard
as a huge defeat. Utilitarianism
has its uses.
Our
lives are overshadowed by the mystery
of the first 9/11, even as the threat of another looms
on the horizon. While the government refuses
to hand over vital information about that seminal event to
their own official Commission, they hold the prospect of another
even worse disaster over our heads, a Sword of Damocles aimed straight
at the heart of our "democracy." General Franks' worries are
based on the latest intelligence, which, according to Newsweek,
consists of a lot of "chatter" indicating another 9/11 is
imminent:
"'You
have rapid-fire, back-to-back significant Al Qaeda attacks,'
one counter-terrorism official tells Newsweek in the
December 1 issue [on newsstands Monday, November 24]. 'It's
starting to look like this could be the buildup to a grand
finale on U.S. soil.'"
But
we may not even have to wait for a dramatic "grand finale"
of the American Republic, ending in a terrorist conflagration
on American soil, before the clampdown begins. Liberal democracy
in wartime is demonstrably less
liberal with each passing day. John Ashcroft and his neoconservative
minions are setting up a police state apparatus that threatens
to surpass – in power and evil intent – that of the Commies,
with its comprehensive network of spies.
Oh,
but we're not spying, we're just "gathering intelligence,"
the Thought Police protest. Yeah, so was the Stasi, and their teachers,
the KGB. If a Democrat administration
tried to pull this sh*t, conservatives would be – literally
– up in arms.
Thank
the gods that some
on the Right, like Bob Barr, Phyllis
Schlafly, Grover Norquist, David Keene, Donald
Devine, and the heroic Howard Phillips,
still display the old fighting spirit of their intellectual forefathers,
and are fiercely resisting this outrageous usurpation.
But
the usurpers, unfortunately, have a trump card, and that is
fear. Fear that they, the government, might fail in
their sworn duty to protect and defend us – it's happened before,
after all. General Franks is right. For all my pessimism,
much of which might be attributed to a certain moodiness of
temperament, I never thought I'd be writing these words, but
a dictatorship in this country is a very real and growing
possibility.
The
"democracy" that we're so presumptuous as to want to export
to the rest of the world may be about to undergo a radical
makeover. Unlike those pulled off by the
Fab Five, however, this is one transformation that is
not going to be an improvement.
–
Justin Raimondo
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