George W. Bush and his corporate sponsors capped off his
second inaugural in fitting
style, balling the night away
in gaudy splendour while the
empire burned half a world
away.
The obscenity of all this
screams for itself; "comment
superfluous" as Noam
Chomsky likes to say.
The inaugural address, in
which the word "Iraq" never
appeared, struck a double
theme, as one of my comrades
put it: "He talked about
spreading democracy, which
means permanent war; and
the ownership society, which
means privatising everything."
Another comrade has gone so far as to suggest that the United States has crossed the line where "republican" institutions converted to "imperial" ones.
That may be extreme; and anyway, there's no way to really know that such a qualitative change has occurred until some years later, when it can be seen as having become irreversible.
One thing is perfectly clear, however: Trying to rule the world through the "global war on terror" is feeding back into the homeland in a seriously frightening way.
This is evidenced on several levels including the outof-control budget deficit, the falling U.S. dollar and, above all, the shredding of basic civil liberties to a degree not seen even under Richard Nixon.
The most visible aspects of
this crisis are fairly well
known:
• The appointment as
Attorney General of the presidential advisor Alberto
Gonzales, who wrote the
memos that U.S. and international laws against torture did
not apply at Abu Ghraib and
Guantanamo.
The incredible practice
of secret offshore detention
without charge or trial, and
plans by the Bush regime to
construct where
detainees can be held permanently, with no judicial
process.
• The show trial of at least
one attorney, Lynne Stewart,
for her communications with an imprisoned client.
The routine use of police power to virtually cage mass protests at events like the Republican convention and the imperial investiture which, for sentimental and ideological reasons, is still known as the presidential inauguration.
The prospect of two or more Bush nominees to the Supreme Court.
But recent disclosures indicate that all this is only the very tip of the iceberg toward which the constitutional Titanic is heading.
Under Donald Rumsfeld, the Pentagon is constructing
secret apparatus under which special operations will be conducted with essentially no oversight - everything from death-squad activities against "terrorist targets" to the manipulation of the foreign press.
Trying to rule the world through the "global war on
terror" is feeding
back into the homeland in a
seriously frightening
way.
Just imagine, officials state openly, if a nutcase kid like John Walker Lindh could join up with the Taliban, what trained professional infiltrators could do. In order to penetrate terrorist enemies of America, covert operators will form groups that themselves engage in terrorism.
But we're not only talking Iraq and al-Qaeda here. Think about what this can mean for For Cuba. For U.S. citizens who organize against their country's assaults on those nations. Only a fool could believe that such operations, if unleashed, will remain offshore.
At the furthest extreme -but no longer inconceivable -what if this government needs a terrorist incident to whip up popular support for
the next imperial adventure?
There is no basis, in this
writer's view, for the theory
that 9/11 was an "inside job"
by the U.S. government - but
next time around, there will
be a priori grounds for suspicion. More than ever this is a
regime that rules by the
manipulation of fear.
As we saw in the Vietnam
War, the conduct of secret
war requires an apparatus of
Official Secrets laws and regulations, with chilling threats
against journalists or other
investigators who may
uncover them.
In the coming few years,
the ability of society to defend
basic freedoms against the assaults of government will be tested to the limit.
Against all this, it's important to remember one fact:
U.S. imperialism is losing the
war. The proof? I already gave it: George W. Bush never uttered the name
in his coronation speech.
But the reality cannot be hidden from public view permanently, especially if the antiwar movement can reconitself out of November's electoral wreckage.
It was the defeat of imperialism in a dirty and unpopular war that blew the did off the repressive apparatus last time around. Here too, history will ultimately repeat itself. (David Finkel is an editor of the U.S. socialist journal AGAINST THE CURRENT. Check it out at www.solidarity-us.org).