March 12, 2006
Imagine knocking
on America’s door and being told, "Americans don’t live here
any longer. They have gone away."
But isn’t that
what we are hearing, that Americans have gone away? Alan Shore told
us so on ABC’s Boston Legal on March 14:
When the
weapons of mass destruction thing turned out not to be true, I
expected the American
people to rise up. They didn't.
Then, when
the Abu Ghraib torture thing surfaced and it was revealed that our
government participated in rendition, a practice where we kidnap
people and turn them over to régimes who specialize in torture,
I was sure then the American people would be heard from. We stood
mute.
Then came the
news that we jailed thousands of so-called terrorist suspects, locked
them up without the right to a trial or even the right to confront
their accusers. Certainly, we would never stand for that. We did.
And now, it's
been discovered the executive branch has been conducting massive,
illegal, domestic surveillance on its own citizens. You and
me. And I at least consoled myself that finally, finally the American
people will have had enough. Evidently, we haven't.
In fact, if
the people of this country have spoken, the message is we're okay
with it all. Torture, warrantless search and seizure, illegal
wiretappings, prison without a fair trial or any trial, war on false pretenses.
We, as a citizenry, are apparently not offended.
There are no
demonstrations on college campuses. In fact, there's no clear indication
that young people even seem to notice. . . .
The Secret
Service can now declare free speech zones to contain, control
and, in effect, criminalize protest. Stop for a second and
try to fathom that. At a presidential rally, parade or appearance,
if you have on a supportive t-shirt, you can be there. If you’re
wearing or carrying something in protest, you can be removed.
This! In the
United States of America.
Readers tell
me that Americans don’t live here any more. They ask what responsible
American citizenry would put up with the trashing of the Bill of
Rights and the separation of powers, with wars based on deception,
and with pathological liars in control of their government? One
reader recently wrote that he believes that "no element of
the U.S. government has been left untainted" by the lies and
manipulations that have driven away accountability. So-called leaders,
he wrote, "talk a great story of American pride and patriotism,"
but in their hands patriotism is merely a device for "cynical
manipulation and fraud."
The Bush regime
acknowledges that 30,000 Iraqi civilians, largely women and children,
have been killed as a result of Bush’s invasion. Others who have
looked at civilian casualties with greater attention have come up
with numbers three to six times as large. The Johns Hopkins study
accounted for 98,000 civilian deaths. Andrew Cockburn, using more
sophisticated statistical analysis, concluded that 180,000 Iraqis
died as a result of Bush’s invasion. The former prime minister Iyad
Allawi says that Iraqi sectarian violence alone is claiming 50–60
deaths per day, or 18,000–22,000 annually, a figure that could
quickly worsen.
Some were
killed by "smart bombs" that weren’t very smart and dropped on hospitals,
schools, and weddings. Others were mistaken for resistance fighters
and killed. Still others were killed by spooked, trigger-happy U.S.
troops. And many died due to the breakdown of the Iraqi health system.
Now
comes a report in the online edition of Time magazine
that U.S. Marines went on a rampage in the village of Haditha and
deliberately slaughtered 15 unarmed Iraqis in their homes. The Iraqis
were still in their bed clothes, and 10 of the 15 were women and
children.
The Marines
turned in a false report that the civilians were killed by an insurgent
bomb. But the evidence of wanton carnage was too powerful. Pressed
by Time’s collection of evidence, U.S. military officials
in Baghdad opened an investigation. Time reports that "according
to military officials, the inquiry acknowledged that, contrary to
the military’s initial report, the 15 civilians killed on Nov. 19
died at the hands of the Marines, not the insurgents. The military
announced last week that the matter has been handed over to the
Naval Criminal Investigative Service, which will conduct a criminal
investigation."
If this story
is true, under Donald Rumsfeld and George Bush’s leadership, proud
and honorable U.S. Marines have degenerated into the Waffen SS.
Those of us raised on John Wayne war movies find this very hard
to take.
A fish rots from the head. Clearly, deception in the Oval Office is corrupting the U.S. military. One reader reported that on March 19 his local PBS station aired a program which discussed the deaths of two young American soldiers in friendly fire incidents similar to Pat Tillman’s death. In each case, he reports, "elements within the military falsified reports and attempted to shift blame to either enemy combatants or allied (Polish) forces."
The neocons have yet to tell us the real reason for their assault on Iraq, which has so far produced 20,000 dead, maimed, and wounded U.S. soldiers, between 30,000 and 180,000 (and rising) dead Iraqis, and demoralized U.S. Marines to the point that they commit atrocities on women and children.
Would real Americans accept these blows for the sake of an undeclared agenda? Perhaps it is true that Americans don’t live here any longer.
March 22, 2006
Dr. Roberts is Chairman of the Institute for Political Economy and Research Fellow at the Independent Institute. He is a former associate editor of the Wall Street Journal, former contributing editor for National Review, and a former assistant secretary of the U.S. Treasury. He is the co-author of The Tyranny of Good Intentions.
Copyright © 2006 LewRockwell.com