Dare
To Look Back
By Sheila Samples
18 April, 2007
Countercurrents.org
"...the high office
of the President has been used to forment a plot to destroy the American's
freedom, and before I leave office, I must inform the citizens of this
plight." John F. Kennedy (November
12, 1963, Columbia U, 10 days before his assassination)
I
cannot recall a single day since Vulcans' Godfather James Baker sent
his thuggish henchman John Bolton to Florida's Palm Beach County to
screw up the vote count that has not been filled with horror, anger,
shame -- despair. On Dec. 9, 2000 -- three days before the Florida deadline
-- the US Republic shuddered on its axis when Bolton crashed through
the doors of a Tallahassee library where Miami-Dade ballots were being
recounted and shouted triumphantly -- "I'm with the Bush-Cheney
team, and I'm here to stop the count!"
In that instant we lost most
of what had taken more than two centuries to build. In one fell swoop,
Americans were thrust into the mire of an Orwellian World spinning out
of control on the other side of the Looking Glass. What a tragedy --
not that so many failed to realize their government had just been seized
in a coup de'etat -- but that the few who did refused to acknowledge
it.
The sudden unconstitutional
decision by five unelected right-wing activist Supreme Court justices
to blatantly steal an election for one of their own -- to stop the vote
count so Bush would not be "embarassed" by losing -- was a
frightening assault upon the separation of powers, the American people,
and upon democracy itself.
Having upset the national
equilibrium, George Bush and Dick Cheney hit the deck at a dead run,
trashing everything in their path. Like a couple of deranged Benny Hills
with "Yakety Sax" blaring in the background, they trashed
treaties, insulted other world leaders, and undermined Constitutional
restraints on everything that stood between them and their goal of worldwide
corporate pillage and total executive power.
Those who dare to look back
will be struck by the speed at which they resurrected the zombies of
the Iran-Contra era, the tyrannical neo-Straussians, and the godless
right-wing evangelical warmongers, Talk about an Axis! The stage was
set for their long-planned crusade to gain control of not only the world
and its resources but of space and cyberspace as well. The only thing
lacking was an incident to catapault them into the war for which they
lusted -- an incident of such magnitude that cries of dissent would
be lost in the roar for war.
Their vision of global dominance
supplied them with moral justification for the filthy lies that took
us into two wars and is threatening a third. "It is ironic,"
writes Canadian author and professor Shadia Drury, "that American
neoconservatives have decided to conquer the world in the name of liberty
and democracy, when they have so little regard for either." Drury
has written two books on the philosophy of Leo Strauss, and she writes
that Strauss believed "religion and war -- perpetual war -- would
lift the masses from the animality of bourgeois consumption and the
pre-occupation with 'creature comforts'. Instead of personal happiness,
they would live their lives in perpetual sacrifice to God and the nation."
Neoconservatives such as
Paul Wolfowitz, Irving and Bill Kristol, Richard Perle, Douglas Feith,
David Wurmser, John Negroponte, and many others, took from Strauss a
doctrine of "all politics all the time" -- nasty, deceptive
and repressive -- whatever it takes for the elite to exercise control
over the vulgar unwashed. That would be you and me, fellow Americans,
and Strauss said we could be inspired to rise above our "brutish
existence only by fear of impending death or catastrophe." The
lies they told, and continue to tell, according to Drury, are "noble
lies for the consumption of the masses."
We are in the clutches of
an evil, evil group of psychopaths -- warmongering moral cowards whose
faux leader, George W. Bush, is a shallow, self-destructive little bully
who deserted his military post during a time of war. Perhaps the most
frightening of all is Michael Ledeen. Looking back, some might remember
that Ledeen was Secretary of State Alexander Haig's advisor, a member
of the National Security Council and a consultant for Ronald Reagan's
Department of Defense. He played a central role in the Iran-Contra scandal.
It was Ledeen who made the initial contact with Iranian arms dealers,
which launched the arms-for-hostages affair and could have -- should
have -- brought down the Reagan presidency.
Anyone reading Ledeen's book,
Machiavelli on Modern Leadership, will recognize the Bush doctrine and
know that the horror of 9-11 was a foregone conclusion -- a "done
deal" -- the minute they seized the 2000 election. Ledeen wrote,
"To be an effective leader, the most prudent method is to ensure
that your people are afraid of you. To instill that fear, you must demonstrate
that those who attack you will not survive."
On the evening of 9-11, Bush
went before a paralyzed nation and, after a brief comment about praying,
grieving and mourning for the 3,000 victims of that terrible day, he
announced, "Thousands of lives were suddenly ended by evil."
Then, warming to his subject, Bush rammed home what would become his
mantra for the next six years -- "These acts shattered steel, but
they cannot dent the steel of American resolve." He then assured
the masses that he would make no distinction between the "terrorists"
and the regimes that harbored them. Bush's vision for revenge was to
chase them all over the world and kill them all...
But a vision is not a plan.
Looking back, it appears that Bush's plan for perpetual war is sending
Americans to their deaths, unequipped and untrained, while bellowing,
"Support the Troops!" Bush's plan is destroying an entire
nation, its culture, its infrastructure -- raping, torturing and slaughtering
its people for no reason other than he can. It is creating a humanitarian
crisis of mind-boggling proportions -- more than 3.9 million Iraqis
have fled their homes to safer areas in Iraq and in neighboring countries.
For Americans, it is more
than a momentary inconvenience that 3,302 of their sons and daughters
have needlessly been killed, 40 just last week, and that more than 26,000
have been wounded, broken, maimed -- their lives and those of their
loved ones utterly destroyed. Stretching our military with its proud
and honorable tradition of protecting this country until it breaks and
then outsourcing legions of mercenaries to do our dirty work of preemptive
attacks and occupation of other countries is not a plan that Americans
will support.
Bush reminds us on a daily
basis that our world changed on "September the 11th." That
is true. But we must dare to look back even further to that dark December
day when five Supreme Court judges made the ghastly decision that spawned
the horrors of not only 9-11, but of the carnage in which we are embroiled
today.
Before that bleak day, I
had never used the f-word nor uttered the Lord's name in vain. However,
as this nation teeters on the cusp of spiritual, physical and political
death, I can only pray that God will damn them. Every last fucking one
of them. Please God. Damn them all.
Sheila Samples is
an Oklahoma writer and a former civilian US Army Public Information
Officer. She is a regular contributor for a variety of Internet sites.
Contact her at: [email protected]
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