THE
USES OF HYSTERIA
This
government-generated hysteria has been put to good use by
its trumpeters, in a general clampdown on every area where
there might be "suspicious" activity. National
Security Advisor Sandy Berger advised Americans to "exercise
caution" and not so subtly suggested they should
perhaps even cut back on their travel plans during the holiday
season. The U.S.
Customs Service is putting hundreds of new agents in the
field, and "we are applying additional resources to do
additional contacts with the public coming through,"
a Customs official said. "It would mean more questioning,
looking for perhaps questionable or suspicious activity, engaging
in more conversation. That's basically how Customs inspectors
work."
BUTTON
THAT LIP –
AND MERRY CHRISTMAS
So,
please, if you have the temerity to disregard Doomsday
Berger, and insist on visiting your family during the
holidays anyway, don't do anything "questionable"
or "suspicious" – you know, like engaging anyone
in "more conversation." Just button your lip, submit
to a body cavity search, and be on your way – or else.
ALGERIA
AND THE WEST
Ressam
is said to have links to a criminal syndicate that specializes
in thievery, which in turn is connected to an Algerian terrorist
group, the Armed
Islamic Group. This particular group seems to specialize
in terrorist attacks on civilians, carried out not only against
European expatriates in Algeria, but also wiping out whole
villages filled with natives. As I write this, a
report is just in detailing the latest atrocity: six members
of the same family had their throats slit Sunday in a small,
isolated village about 160 miles west of Algiers. Over 100,000
have lost their lives since the Islamic insurgency was sparked,
in 1992, by the nullification of the election results giving
the fundamentalist Islamic
Salvation Front a clear majority. In alliance with members
of the Algerian
Communist Party(!), the regime routinely brutalizes and
jails its mostly fundamentalist Islamic opponents, even the
relatively secular liberals, with the tacit cooperation of
the U.S. and its European allies.
KINGDOM
COME
Aside
from tightening "security measures" inside the U.S.
and at the border, there has been a general
roundup of Islamic militants abroad, from Jordan to Pakistan:
13 were arrested in Jordan by local authorities – 11
Jordanians, one Iraqi, and one Algerian, and in Pakistan hundreds
were arrested. Contradicting earlier reports – which
cited government officials – Washington
is now playing down the terrorist angle. While officials
contend that the U.S. has no evidence of any particular terrorist
plot or target, state department spokesman James Foley
says out of the other side of his mouth that "we've indicated
that we have information that terrorists are undertaking planning
for attacks during the New Year period. It is obviously particularly
important now for there to be maximum vigilance." So
what's up with all the wildly contradictory statements –
do they or don't they have credible evidence of a plot to
blow us all to kingdom come?
AMERICA,
THE WORLD'S TARGET
Government
officials are probably telling the truth about the lack of
evidence for any particular plot, but they are right
to batten down the hatches and sound the alarm anyway –
because we are living in a state of perpetual siege. As the
arbiter and enforcer of the post-cold war order, the main
financial and military prop of repressive regimes throughout
the world, we have become the targets of every aggrieved faction
on earth. As we intervene, on a global scale, in the civilizational
conflicts of non-Western nations – which we can neither
understand nor ameliorate – we are reaping a whirlwind
of hatred. The current terrorist scare more than confirms
Samuel
P. Huntington's
thesis
"that Western intervention in the affairs of other civilizations
is probably the single most dangerous source of instability
and potential global conflict in a multicivilizational world."
Given Huntington's insight, it is no surprise that we are
"celebrating" the holiday season cowering in our
homes, afraid
to get on a plane or even to venture out on New Year's Eve.
GLOBALIZATION
AND ITS DISCONTENTS
They
all hate us, and are out to get us: in the age of the American
Empire, this is not paranoia but a statement of simple fact.
In this context, the terrorist scare is not all that overblown:
the U.S. government is taking reasonable precautions –
reasonable, that is, in the era of "globalization"
in which all the treasures and troubles of the world are deposited
on our shores.
MTV,
JFK, AND THE NWO
In
a universalist crusade to make the world safe for MTV,
gay
marriage, and the profit
margins of multinational corporations, we have unleashed
forces that we cannot comprehend – or placate. As the
consequences of our actions boomerang and endanger the imperial
megalopolis itself, the truth is beginning to sink into the
American consciousness: in proclaiming the internationalist
credo, John F. Kennedy
averred that America
must "pay any price, bear any burden" to carry
out its foreordained leadership role. Well, we are paying
it. We are the captives of our own overweening dominance,
an irony anticipated some fifty years ago by Garet
Garrett, the Old
Right pamphleteer and prophet, in words that haunt me
as I listen to the rising panic on the evening news.
PRISONERS
OF HISTORY
In
his classic Rise
of Empire, Garrett describes the signs that a republic
has become an empire: the rise of the executive principle
of government, the subordination of domestic policy to international
allegiances, the rise of militarism, a system of satellite
nations, and "an emotional complex of vaunting and fear."
The final symptom, however, is near fatal, for
"when
it is clearly defined it may be already too late to do anything
about it. That is to say, a time comes when Empire finds itself
a prisoner of history. The history of a Republic is
its own history. The past does not contain the future, like
a seed. A Republic may change its course, or reverse it, and
that will be its own business. But the history of Empire is
world history and belongs to many people. A Republic is not
obliged to act upon the world, either to change or instruct
it. Empire, on the other hand, must put forth its power."
THE
NEW ERA
Is
it really too late to stanch the rising sense of panic that
seems to be the leitmotif of the new year and the new era?
Are we stuck forever with the draconian
"anti-terrorist" measures that violate our liberty
and what is left of our dignity? Must we live in eternal expectation
that some inexplicably evil disaster, such as the World
Trade Center bombing, could wipe us out in the next moment?
THE
BURDEN OF EMPIRE
It
isn't easy being a citizen of the American Empire, these days:
the burden may be heavier than Americans are prepared to carry.
We seem to have lost much more than we gained – even
our history, which we must share with such formerly distant
peoples as Algerian Islamists, Bosnian Muslims, and Albanian
Kosovars, who now play a central role in our destiny.
BOSNIAN
BOOMERANG
Speaking
of Bosnians, is anyone surprised that Ahmed Ressam's alleged
accomplice, a character by the name of Karim Said Atmani,
had been previously expelled from Canada – and sent packing
on a plane to Bosnia? The Bosnian connection is not hard to
fathom: it has long been known that Islamic
militants associated with Osama bin Laden have been given
a safe harbor in Bosnia, where they operated with relative
impunity until the 1998
bombing of the American embassies in Africa.
KEYSTONE
COPS
What
is really odd is the disparity between what Canadian
authorities are telling us and what the French
are saying about the mysterious Atmani. Now the subject
of a far-ranging manhunt, Atmani, it seems, had been responsible
for several terrorist bombings, including one that
took place in a Paris subway in 1996. The Canadians declared
that they had extradited him to France – but the French
claimed that, au contraire, the Canadians had done
nothing of the kind, but instead previously expelled him to
Bosnia. And besides, they averred, in their view Atmani
had no known connection to the Paris bombing. We can only
speculate as to what is being covered up here – but does
anyone really believe this Keystone Cops routine?
GANGSTERS
The
American and Canadian authorities also denied, at least initially,
that they knew whether Ressam or Atmani had any known connection
to terrorist organizations. Yet both seemed well known to
French intelligence as members of what one official called
"gangster-terrorist organizations." U.S. officials
are hot for evidence that the shadowy Ressam-Atmani conspiracy
is linked to Osama
bin Laden, their all-purpose villain. But the French description
sounds like nothing so much as the drug-dealing and distinctly
gangsterish thugs who call themselves the Kosovo
Liberation Army. These charmers run the European heroin
trade and are now
displacing the fast-declining Mafia as the big power in
southern Italy. The same Mujahedeen who served the
CIA in Afghanistan were recruited from all over the Middle
East to "liberate" Kosovo. The news that they have
turned these "liberated" countries into base camps
and safe havens for terrorists whose target is America would
be ironic but hardly surprising; when you're a snake-charmer,
the risk of being bitten comes with the job.
OUR
GLORIOUS PROTECTORS
We
are indeed the prisoners of history, just as Garrett foresaw,
lording it over the entire globe when we cannot even ensure
the safety of Americans, in America, from a sudden terrorist
strike. As we cower behind triple-bolted steel-reinforced
doors in our Y2K-proof bunkers, shaking in fear of retribution
by any one of a number of crazed assailants, our deliverers
and saviors appear in the form of government officials who
smugly assure us: "Only we can protect you."
Perhaps they are right, but what I want to know is –
who will protect us from them?
THE
TERRORIZATION OF AMERICAN LIFE
The
terrorization of American life will continue and even accelerate
as we ring in the new millennium for one very good reason:
it benefits the centralizers, the interventionists, the war
propagandists, and the global crusaders in government and
the media. A constant state of crisis means that we must
trust our rulers, whose ostensible job is to protect us from
foreign invaders: in this context, we place our lives literally
in their hands. Why does this make me nervous?
CRACKDOWN
Surveillance
and repression of legitimate and peaceful political dissent
is a time-honored
American wartime tradition, and the "war on terrorism"
is the latest cover for a general crackdown on "rightwing
extremists" who supposedly threaten the peace of the
nation by their very existence. The main effect of "anti-terrorist"
legislation, passed by Congress in a bipartisan chorus of
self-congratulation, has not been to combat foreign terrorists,
but to raise the heavy hand of government repression against
homegrown American dissidents. Such are the domestic
uses of a globalist foreign policy.
AN
IMPERIAL PREROGATIVE
Speaking
of which: the "wag the dog" scenario, so overused
by Clinton that it has become a grisly popular joke, could
not be executed by the chief executive of a Republic. He could
not, on his own authority, call out the troops: the
Founders, in their wisdom, reserved this right to Congress.
But an Emperor can rain death on foreigners at will,
either for his own amusement, like Nero
and Caligula,
or as a diversion away from the scandals and excesses of the
Imperial Court, as in the case of His Imperial Majesty, Clinton
I.
WHY
DO THEY HATE US?
And
the beat goes on – U.S. policymakers openly plot another
assault on Iraq, while continuing to starve its people. The
Pakistani general whose name George Bush could not recall
is busy rounding up hundreds of his opponents and loudly threatening
to execute the democratically-elected President he overthrew
– the latter with our tacit approval, and the former
in response to our covert command. In Turkey, the Islamic
Virtue Party is banned by the government, and a radically
anti-religious regime is unstintingly supported by the U.S.
and its allies – who are ready to proclaim that the forcible
secularization of the Turks has proceeded to the point where
they are no different from your typical godless European.
Such politically correct secularism has been properly rewarded
with a much-coveted
membership shot at in the European Union. In Algeria,
the leaders of the parliamentary-minded National Salvation
Front remain in prison, in spite of an official U.S.-backed
government program to "re-integrate" their followers
back into "civil society" (at least until they win
the next elections). In Egypt,
Jordan,
Saudi
Arabia, and throughout the region, the pattern is repeated
– repression, rebellion, and retribution – while
ordinary Americans look up from their television screens just
long enough to wonder: why do they hate us?
JUANITA,
WE BELIEVE YOU
Speaking
of "wag the dog" – the announcement that Juanita
Broaddrick, who claims she was raped by the President of the
United States, is launching
a Paula Jones-style civil suit against Clinton should
have half the world trembling. The last time this happened,
the poor Iraqis and Serbs felt the full brunt of the Clintonian
Caligula's wrath: recent history teaches us that a little
state terrorism is more than enough to knock a sex scandal
off the front pages and relegate the President's shame to
the status of a footnote. And so the story changes from being
"all about sex" to being "all about death"
– except that, in Clinton's case, one gets the eerie
feeling that it is the same story. During the reign
of this liar and sexual predator, America launched more military
interventions than under the four previous presidents combined.
Having legitimized and rationalized rape as a prerogative
of political power, at least in his own mind, it wasn't long
before he would try to legitimize it as a foreign policy.
During the first few days of the Kosovo war, we posted the
following slogan on the front page of Antiwar.com: "CLINTON
DOES TO KOSOVO WHAT HE DID TO JUANITA BROADDRICK." We
stand by our story, and proffer this advice to Iraqis, Serbs,
and citizens of other "rogue" states – take
cover.
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