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The Battle For A Country's Soul
A lady asked Dr. [Benjamin] Franklin, "Well Doctor, what have we got, a republic or a monarchy?"
"A republic," replied the Doctor, "if you can keep it."
-- Papers of Dr. James McHenry, describing the scene as they left the Federal Convention of 1787 in Philadelphia
Seven years after al-Qaeda’s attacks on America, as the Bush administration slips into history, it is clear that what began on September 11, 2001, as a battle for America’s security became, and continues to be, a battle for the country’s soul.
In looking back, one of the most remarkable features of this struggle is that almost from the start, and at almost every turn along the way, the Bush administration was warned that whatever the short-term benefits of its extralegal approach to fighting terrorism, it would have tragically destructive long-term consequences both for the rule of law and America’s interests in the world. These warnings came not just from political opponents, but also from experienced allies, including the British Intelligence Service, the experts in the traditionally conservative military and the FBI, and, perhaps most surprisingly, from a series of loyal Republican lawyers inside the administration itself. The number of patriotic critics inside the administration and out who threw themselves into trying to head off what they saw as a terrible departure from America’s ideals, often at an enormous price to their own careers, is both humbling and reassuring.
Instead of heeding this well-intentioned dissent, however, the Bush administration invoked the fear flowing from the attacks on September 11 to institute a policy of deliberate cruelty that would have been unthinkable on September 10. President Bush, Vice President Cheney, and a small handful of trusted advisers sought and obtained dubious legal opinions enabling them to circumvent American laws and traditions. In the name of protecting national security, the executive branch sanctioned coerced confessions, extrajudicial detention, and other violations of individuals’ liberties that had been prohibited since the country’s founding. They turned the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel into a political instrument, which they used to expand their own executive power at the expense of long-standing checks and balances.
When warned that these policies were unlawful and counterproductive, they ignored the experts and made decisions outside of ordinary bureaucratic channels, and often outside of the public’s view. Rather than risking the possibility of congressional opposition, they classified vital interpretations of law as top secret. No one knows to this day how many more secret opinions the Bush Justice Department has produced. Far from tempering these policies over time, they marginalized and penalized those who challenged their idées fixes. Because the subject matter was shrouded in claims of national security, however, much of the internal dissent remained hidden.
Throughout this period, President Bush and Vice President Cheney have continued to insist that they never authorized or condoned “torture,” which they acknowledge is criminal under US law. But their semantic parsing of the term began to seem increasingly disingenuous as details from the secret detention and interrogation program surfaced, piece by piece. By the last year of the Bush presidency, many of the administration’s own top authorities, including Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell and former Secretary of Homeland Security Tom Ridge, as well as John Kiriakou, the former CIA officer involved in the capture of the high-ranking al-Qaeda member Abu Zubayda, acknowledged that as far as they were concerned, waterboarding was torture.
Such extreme measures were perhaps understandable in the panic-filled days and weeks immediately after September 11, falling into place among other historic infringements of civil liberties during times of dire national security crisis. Yet seven years later, the Bush administration’s counterterrorism policies remained largely unchanged. There had been some alterations and improvements. But the legal framework survives despite nearly universal bipartisan acceptance outside of the Bush administration that Guantánamo should be shut down, that the military commission process was hopelessly flawed, and that the human rights violations at Abu Ghraib and elsewhere were not the work of a few “rotten apples” on the bottom, but rather the result of irresponsible leadership at the top. In fact torture, which was reviled as a depraved vestige of primitive cultures before September 11, seemed in danger of becoming normalized.
Through four congressional election cycles and two presidential campaigns, there has been surprisingly little intelligent debate about the Bush administration’s approach to terrorism. Top administration officials continue to insist that their program is legal and effective; while critics complain, they rarely provide their own proposals for a better system. Since the Democratic Party gained control of Congress in 2006, there have been stirrings toward investigation and reform. But in July 2007, a bill to close Guantánamo was defeated when the Senate voted overwhelmingly (94–3) against transferring the detainees to prisons in the United States. Clearly, the fear of appearing “soft” on terrorism still haunts elected officials.
The presidential election of 2008 may prove a turning point. In a hopeful sign of change, both parties’ presidential nominees have taken strong, principled stands against torture, promising to close loopholes that secretly sanction it, and to bring the country’s detention and interrogation policies back in line with its core constitutional values. Yet neither candidate had put forward a coherent alternative by June 2008. The Bush administration’s “New Paradigm” remains intact, allowing the administration to claim all of the powers that flow from war, while allowing detainees almost none of the rights that either the military or criminal justice system confers.
Senator John McCain’s opposition to torture surely runs as deep as that of any politician in America. He captured the essence of the issue eloquently in a simple declaration in 2005 that “it’s not about them; it’s about us.” Yet in a nod to the conservative base of his party, even McCain has feinted to the right, siding with the Bush White House in early 2008 against proposed legislation that would limit CIA officers to the humane interrogation techniques allowed by the military.
An obvious reason for the political caution is fear. By the measure that matters most, the Bush administration can point to its record in fighting terrorism as a success. There have been no terrorist attacks in America since September 11, 2001. No rival wants to be accused of breaking this streak.
Yet it is hard to know if the Bush administration’s success represents the vanquishing of new credible threats, or rather the absence of any. As former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld himself acknowledged in 2003, “Today we lack metrics to know if we are winning or losing the global war on terror.” During the Bush years, it’s been almost impossible to tell. In the absence of government transparency and independent analysis, the public has been asked to simply take the President’s word on faith that inhumane treatment has been necessary to stop attacks and save lives.
Increasingly, however, those with access to the inner workings of the Bush administration’s counterterrorism program have begun to question those claims. In March 2008, after President Bush announced his intention to veto legislation requiring the CIA to abide by the same interrogation rules as the military, Senator Jay Rockefeller, chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, challenged the administration’s entire rationale. Rockefeller’s criticism over the years was muted, at best, and so his bold rebuke was particularly noteworthy. “As Chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee,” a statement he released said,
I have heard nothing to suggest that information obtained from enhanced interrogation techniques has prevented an imminent terrorist attack. And I have heard nothing that makes me think the information obtained from these techniques could not have been obtained through traditional interrogation methods used by military and law enforcement interrogators. On the other hand, I do know that coercive interrogations can lead detainees to provide false information in order to make the interrogation stop.
In other words, according to one of the few US officials with full access to the details, the drastic “ticking time bomb” threat used to justify what many Americans would otherwise consider indefensible tactics had never actually occurred, other than on the TV sets of those watching Fox-TV’s terrorism fantasy show 24.
Rockefeller asserted that the Bush administration’s approach was not only unnecessary, it was also undermining the security that it claimed to safeguard. “The CIA’s program damages our national security by weakening our legal and moral authority, and by providing al-Qaeda and other terrorist groups a recruiting and motivational tool,” he said. “By continuing this interrogation program, the President is sacrificing our strategic advantage for questionable tactical gain.”
Doubt has begun to emerge from within the administration itself, too. In 2006, a scientific advisory group to the US intelligence agencies produced an exhaustive report on interrogation called “Educing Information,” which concluded that there was no scientific proof whatsoever that harsh techniques worked. In fact, several of the experts involved in the study described the infliction of physical and psychological cruelty as outmoded, amateurish, and unreliable.
In confidential interviews, several of those with inside information about the NSA’s controversial Terrorist Surveillance Program have expressed similar disenchantment. As one of these former officials says of the ultrasecret program so furiously defended by David Addington, chief of staff and former counsel to Vice President Cheney, “It’s produced nothing.”
While the Bush administration can point proudly to its record of no terrorist attacks on America since 2001, its progress in bringing the perpetrators of the September 11 attacks to justice is less impressive. The administration certainly could claim a number of top al-Qaeda scalps. Yet as of June 2008, both Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri remained at large. The government’s own statistics, meanwhile, showed that both the number of terrorist attacks around the world and the estimation of the threat posed by al-Qaeda were growing. According to the most recent National Intelligence Estimate, issued in April 2006, “A large body of all-source reporting indicates that activists identifying themselves as jihadists, although still a small percentage of Muslims, are increasing in both numbers and geographical dispersion.” The report noted carefully, “If this trend continues, threats to US interests at home and abroad will become more diverse, leading to increasing attacks worldwide.”
The war in Iraq, the Israeli–Palestinian conflict, and the deteriorating security situations in Afghanistan and Pakistan have all reportedly contributed to the radicalization of the Muslim world. But according to one former official who traveled extensively through the Middle East, no subject was described by Muslims he spoke with as more deeply disturbing than America’s abuse of the detainees. Eric Haseltine, the former top adviser on science and technology to the Director of National Intelligence, worries that prisoner abuse has profoundly hurt what he defines as the most important battle in the war on terror—the struggle to win the support of the next generation of Arab youth. “I came away from my many visits to the Middle East convinced there is a widespread belief that if America abuses prisoners then there can be no true freedom for anyone,” he said. “It seemed to me that our greatest sin in the eyes of Muslims was not invading the Middle East, or even our support of Israel: our greatest sin was robbing Muslims of hope.”
By many estimates, by the end of the Bush years, America’s reputation as a lead defender of democracy and human rights was in tatters. According to the Pew Global Attitudes Project, in June 2006 public opinion in two countries in the world supported the US war on terror—India and Russia. Meanwhile, corrupt and repressive states, including Egypt, Sudan, and Zimbabwe, have all justified their own brutality by citing America’s example. Egyptian President-for-Life Hosni Mubarak declared that the US treatment of detainees proved that “we were right from the beginning in using all means, including military tribunals, to combat terrorism.” Even the most dependable of US allies, including Germany, Denmark, and the European Union, by 2008 had all accused the US of violating internationally accepted standards for humane treatment and due process. Canada went so far as to place America on its official list of rogue countries that use torture.
The Bush administration’s controversial antiterrorism program had other unwelcome consequences as well. Seven years after the attacks of September 11, not a single terror suspect held outside of the US criminal court system had been tried. Of the 759 detainees acknowledged to have been held in Guantánamo, approximately 270 remained there, only a handful of whom had been charged. Among these, not a single “enemy combatant” had yet had the opportunity to cross-examine the government or see the evidence on which he was being held.
The military commission process was clearly plagued by problems to the point of dysfunction. One stalwart official after another has stepped forward with astounding accusations of impropriety. In a sworn statement in the spring of 2008, for example, the former top prosecutor in the Office of Military Commissions disclosed that the Pentagon had pressured him to time “sexy” prosecutions for political advantage, and to use evidence against the detainees that he considered tainted by torture. After resigning in protest, the prosecutor, Air Force Colonel Morris Davis, also disclosed that when he suggested to William Haynes, the general counsel at the Pentagon, that a few acquittals might enhance Guantánamo’s reputation for fair treatment, as had been true of the war crimes trials of the Nazis in Nuremburg, Haynes was horrified. “We can’t have acquittals! We’ve got to have convictions!” Davis quoted the top Pentagon lawyer as saying. “If we’ve been holding these guys for so long, how can we explain letting them get off?”
As the FBI and other early critics had warned, the administration’s use of coercion to force confessions has created legal havoc. Impassioned disputes over the admissibility of evidence obtained through torture have crippled the administration’s efforts to prosecute many detainees. In May 2008, the Pentagon announced that it was dismissing charges against Mohammed al-Qahtani, the Saudi suspected of having been the “twentieth hijacker,” apparently because the inhumane treatment to which he had been subjected during his long interrogation in Guantánamo, all of which had been authorized by Rumsfeld, had destroyed the credibility of his confession, hopelessly tainting the case.
In one particularly poignant case in 2004, suspicions of torture caused a Marine Corps prosecutor to reluctantly drop charges against Mohamedou Ould Slahi, an alleged al-Qaeda leader in Guantánamo who was accused of helping the Hamburg cell that planned the September 11 attacks.
The prosecutor, Lieutenant Colonel Stuart Couch, had been enlisted specifically because he had wanted to help bring justice for a friend who had been the co-pilot of United Flight 175, the second plane that al-Qaeda crashed into the World Trade Center. After he pieced together the record of torture techniques to which Slahi had been subjected, however, Couch, who is a devout Christian, could no longer continue the case in good conscience. “Here was somebody I thought was connected to 9/11,” Couch told The Wall Street Journal, “but in our zeal to get information, we had compromised our ability to prosecute him.”
In February 2008, the Bush administration announced its intention to bring capital murder charges against six detainees it said were linked to the September 11 attacks, including Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. But the taint of torture loomed over these prosecutions, too. Notably missing from the list of the accused was Abu Zubaydah, one of the detainees whose waterboarding sessions had been videotaped by the CIA. The CIA’s destruction of the videotapes, which was under criminal investigation by an outside counsel by May 2008, clearly jeopardized any future prosecution of these two figures, whom the administration had previously described as key al-Qaeda leaders.
Despite Bush’s vows to hold the perpetrators accountable after the publication of photos from Abu Ghraib, as of the spring of 2008 no senior Bush administration official had been prosecuted or removed from office in connection with the abuse of prisoners. By April 2006, the nongovernmental organization Human Rights Watch estimated that more than 600 US military and civilian personnel were involved in abusing more than 460 detainees. President Bush sporadically mentioned a wish to close Guantánamo, but since September 2006, six new detainees have been sent there, including two from unspecified CIA black sites. At the same time, the US prison at Bagram air base outside of Kabul was being expanded to hold some thousand prisoners, according to Human Rights Watch. If Bush or Cheney regretted the uncounted deaths, disappearances, and torment of prisoners in their administration’s custody, or the false intelligence and contaminated prosecutions that these tactics produced, they didn’t express it.
After some dozen internal investigations, mostly by the military, a number of low-ranking enlisted soldiers and officers were convicted or disciplined for prisoner abuse. But by design, the investigations were focused downward in the chain of command, not up to those who set the policy. As Major General Antonio Taguba told The New Yorker, his investigation of Abu Ghraib was limited to the military police below, not those above him. “I was legally prevented from further investigation into higher authority,” he said. “I was limited to a box.”
The CIA, meanwhile, quietly investigated seven or more allegedly mistaken renditions of innocent victims, and sent several homicide cases resulting from prisoner abuse to the Justice Department for possible criminal prosecution, but not a single officer was charged. Instead, President Bush gave George Tenet, who presided over the creation of the CIA’s interrogation and detention program, the Medal of Freedom. One of the most flagrant instances of unjust treatment was the case of Khalid el-Masri, a German citizen who was falsely identified as a member of al-Qaeda with a similar name. Flown to Afghanistan, he was, he later said, tortured by the CIA. The female officer who pushed to keep Khaled el-Masri imprisoned in Afghanistan after his mistaken rendition was promoted to a top post handling sensitive matters in the Middle East. El-Masri, meanwhile, was denied the opportunity to bring a civil suit against the US government for his false imprisonment because the Bush administration succeeded in arguing that simply addressing the subject of rendition in a US court would violate national security. Back in Germany, he was reportedly beset by emotional problems.
By the last year of the Bush presidency, growing numbers of former administration insiders had abandoned the government with the conviction that in waging the war against terrorism, America had lost its way. Many had fought valiantly to right what they saw as a dangerously wrong turn. With Bush, Cheney, and Addington still firmly in power, it was hard to declare their efforts a success. Still, with change in the air, there was a sense that history might be on their side. Jack Goldsmith, the assistant attorney general who objected to the Justice Department memo allowing torture, moved to Boston to teach law at Harvard, where he was ironically greeted with protests because of his association with the Bush administration’s policies. Matthew Waxman who, as deputy assistant secretary of defense fought unsuccessfully to uphold the Geneva Conventions, moved to New York, where he, too, began to teach law, in his case at Columbia.
Alberto Mora, as general counsel of the US Navy, had campaigned within the Pentagon to end the coercive methods used at Guantánamo. He left the administration as a pariah in the eyes of some Pentagon colleagues but was given the John F. Kennedy Foundation’s Profiles in Courage Award in 2006 for speaking out. Most of the FBI agents who opposed “enhanced” interrogation techniques retired and joined private security firms, taking vast amounts of wisdom about Islamic terrorism with them.
In Charlottesville, Virginia, Phillip Zelikow, the director of the 9/11 Commission, who returned to teaching history at the University of Virginia, tried to take stock. In time, he predicted, the Bush administration’s descent into torture would be seen as akin to Roosevelt’s internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II. It happened, he believed, in much the same way, for many of the same reasons. As he put it, “Fear and anxiety were exploited by zealots and fools.”
110 Comments so far
Show All"Such extreme measures were perhaps understandable in the panic-filled days and weeks immediately after September 11"
Were they? I don't think so.
I would be remiss if I did not mention that the USA has never had a SOUL.
It never acted with integrity anywhere it traveled--- to, because it never showed any integrity at home.
The President orders the Generals to "Go to War" and the General orders the Colonel, who orders the Major who orders the Captain and the chain of command is made up of order takers, who give orders to other order takers----and if it is a criminal act or acts then so what---"I was taking orders"----it is part of the American Heritage.
Never mind that the USA signed the Geneva Accords and presided over the Nuremberg Tribunals where they stood with the world and judged the Germans, Italians, and Japanese for the very things they have been doing since then--and before then--they practiced these skills on the Native Peoples----and they became very good it.
Some may argue that these crimes against humanity and nature (in the USA there are no historical references to any animal extinctions prior to 1492---since then over 100 species of animals----and several tribes of Human beings have become extinct) are necessary: "others must die so that we may live"---"they should not have stood in our way"----"God told me I could do it" for a nation such as the USA to exist.
The USA will need to acquire a "SOUL" FIRST------- if time is available--but you cannot loose something you never possessed.
Fooling yourself is the first step in suicide.
Thank you for your time.
In Charlottesville, Virginia, Phillip Zelikow, the director of the 9/11 Commission, who returned to teaching history at the University of Virginia, tried to take stock. In time, he predicted, the Bush administration's descent into torture would be seen as akin to Roosevelt's internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II. It happened, he believed, in much the same way, for many of the same reasons. As he put it, "Fear and anxiety were exploited by zealots and fools."
Rubbish! The internment of the Japanese wasn't done with torture. The usa in the 1940s didn't launch an unprovoked war of agression. No, my boy. If you wanted to compare the actions of the bush regime to that era of history you'd have to look at the actions of those whom the usa fought, as well as one of it's allies; Germany, Japan and the USSR. After all, it was those three nations who were so very enthusiastic about violating human dignaty by torturing suspects. It was the first two who launched wars for resources and glory. The world will long remember what your nation has done in the name of fighting 'terrorism' with the use of greater terrorism. Shame that the us history teachers will not be so observant...
It is not enough to let history judge the Bush Administration as corrupt, lawless, and criminal. We are here - NOW - not 20 years in the future. Let us exact judgment NOW, in real, measurable ways that can prevent future administrations from being able to commit the same crimes - or worse - by pointing to this time and saying "they suffered no accountability, no punishment," and believing that they will suffer no retribution for doing similar things.
the war on terror is a misnomer.
it is the war on resistance.
if one makes this translation constantly in one's mind as one reads all the countless articles and books on the subject of these times, no matter how enlightened one already be or agree, a peculiar small further light dawns somehow. or so it seems to me.
the war on resistance.
Perhaps these thugs have been so persistent in pursuing unproductive torture techniques because this is all that they can do to convince the populace that there actually ARE "terrorists" in the world, apart from agents provacateurs, rogue CIA agents, and a handful of deluded zealots.
We had the perfect oppurtunity to dismantle our democracy building apparatus after the cold war ended and return to to pre-Wilson "make the world safe for democracy" foreign policy. Why not "speak softly and carry a big stick" - that is protect our self at home and ensure that US goods and services can be traded without incident on the high seas or foreign ports of call. Help nations with gestures of good will but never a borrower nor lender be. PS the nation still has a soul, it needs to reclaim it and put a good spit shine back on it - all in due time.
"...the Bush administration invoked the fear flowing from the attacks on September 11 to institute a policy of deliberate cruelty that would have been unthinkable on September 10."
While I agree with most of what you proffer as horror, I also believe it's necessary to look at how we got to that point with a more realistic view of history.
By the time CheneyOilCo and their monkeypuppet got the opportunity to institutionalize torture to the extreme degree that it would spread, the US had been practicing it for five years. Torture is Bill Clinton's baby. He set it up with PDD 39... with some cheerleading from Gore and others.
Yes, they outsourced it to other countries (Egypt and others), but that torture by proxy is not something that US history can conveniently wash away. That no one had complained about the program of extraordinary rendition and torture to which most Americans had obediently turned blind eye, only gave the next "administration" reinforcement for the expanded steps that were taken to spread the program... a tacit permission of sorts.
We are a country which elects war criminals to represent us.
"The USA will need to acquire a "SOUL" FIRST——- if time is available–but you cannot loose something you never possessed."
In the aftermath of WWII, pale Americans began to compare the actions of its own governments & own heroes to those of the recently-vanquished enemy. The movements which coalesced in the '60s were an attempt to complete what the defeat of the Axis powers began; but that attempt was thwarted as the heirs of fascism, having expunged their intimate kinship with Mussolini & Hitler from the official discourse, turned into a struggle against all & every sort of revolutionary project in the name of combatting the USSR. To look at the course of the US not as a glorious course of expanding freedom, but as a parody of liberation, means that one is an enemy of the US.
We saw Jeremiah Wright savaged by the press & eventually by Obama when Obama's candidacy brought to public notice the truths that a large number of Americans find incontestable.
The "America lost its way" theme is like the old Russian peasant's certainty that "if the tsar only knew", he would do something.
i am glad to see the posts here rejecting the article - it is classic bullitis shittis
it starts:
"Seven years after al-Qaeda's attacks on America, as the Bush administration slips into history, it is clear that what began on September 11, 2001, as a battle for America's security became, and continues to be, a battle for the country's soul."
first off: bush is not yet history and he may yet bomb iran just to make sure he is not tried as a war criminal
i agree with Native son when he writes:
"I would be remiss if I did not mention that the USA has never had a SOUL."
the genocide of the first nations (continuing to this day) and the enslavement of the blacks (arguably continuing to this day - now they just throw them in jail)
no soul here - death and murder do not count as brownie points towards a soul
author:
"the Bush administration was warned that whatever the short-term benefits of its extralegal approach to fighting terrorism, it would have tragically destructive long-term consequences both for the rule of law and America's interests in the world."
and as chomsky points out, the administration knew this but they decided the oil grab and strategic takeover of the area was far more desirable than any blowback from the cia fictions otherwise known as taliban and al queada
that's how much the administration cares about the fictional war on terror
they have a "fuck it" kind of attitude - at best
or as bush, the andover cheerleader said: bring em on
bring who on
both these groups were working for and were funded by the cia - and still are
how sick are you when you use your own employees to kill your own citizens
other cia employees include:
manuel noriega (carter cut him off from his 300,000 dollar a year stipend but he was re-instated quickly by bush daddy see, he was the head of the cia at that time)
saddaam hussin: 36 years of loyal service
lee harvey oswald
as webster tarpley says - you pay them all, the wackier the better because you never know when they will come in handy as patsies
speaking of patsies: how about 19 saudis who (though this has never been verified) took over 3 planes they didn't know how to fly and overwhelmed the trillion dollar air defenses of the us - with boxcutters yet
bullshit
bullshit
bullshit
but you are so stupid you will believe anything
and i do mean anything
then there is osama bin laden - living in a cave on the asshole of nowhere - directing somehow this insidious plot
*the fbi has osl on the 10 most wanted list for bombings in africa bit they clearly state that he is not a suspect in 9/11 as here is no proof that he is connected to that event
what's it matter - when you are dealing with a population as dumb as the us you don't need a good story - any old bullshit will do
i could go through this drivel piece by piece but it is not worth my time
citing the scumbag lizard zellikow on the outro proves beyond any doubt how ill informed and deluded this author is
bush's plan of providing himself and his buddies preemptive pardons before he leaves office is all you need to know about how guilty they are - this shows they are aware of the fact that they are felons and concedes on its face that they know they are guilty
what is needed is this:
a full and independent investigation of 9/11 and a legal prosecution of all those involved
there was no investigation of jfk's assassination - no investigation of 9/11
fingerprints methinks of the secret government
the fact remains that no one knows what happened on 9/11 and the only ones trying to find out are in the much maligned 9/11 truth movement
it is an unorganized movement with many schism's and much infighting but at least they are trying to hold an investigation into what happened
the best explanation has been provided by dr judy wood:
http://www.drjudywood.com/
her theory is that the towers were vaporized by what they call dew weapons - directed energy weapons, read about them here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Directed-energy_weapon
wake up, for fuck's sake
i love my country - i don't get all the angst from some of the folks out there. I'm i that naive to think we are an OK country. Sure there are problems and unresoved issues - but give it time. As E. Hemmingway said "The sun also rises". In other words, pessimisim de damed have some heart and work hard for your common dreams.
NativeSon and BryanD nailed it, this country was founded upon racism, slavery, and organized genocide...that's the real reason for the "success" of American Capitalism. When you can "discover" an entire hemisphere, steal it's wealth from the native inhabitants at the cost of millions of lives, and then systematically destroy a once pristine environment to create the cesspool that is america today, it may be easy for some to imagine how wise our slaveholding "founding fathers" were. For many of us, however, it is all a cruel and neverending lie.
To many of us who have fought to defend American values, it is demoralizing to watch the Bush administration and its fascist minded enablers demolish those same values. At the same time that soldiers and marines are fighting and dying to protect the Constitution, Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney are doing all they can to demolish the tenuous rights claimed for all of us under the law, often to wrench more power to themselves away from We The People, and worse, solely to cover up their misdeeds.
I agree with bryanD
The Bush-Cheney cabal is both stupid and insane. This is a lethal combination. I'm pretty sure a scheme to stay in power and declare martial law is in the works. The usual checks and balances are a joke.
The constitution and the rule of law have already been trashed. We had better hope that a group of Generals are willing to rescue us. Maybe corporations, the real power, will decide their best interests would not be served by a monarchy.
We poor members of the public have allowed things to get so out of control that we are helpless to effect any change. if you get the chance, and care at all, vote Obama.
Thanks marc, norman, Clifford you beat me to it.
I bought her book, (the dark side) what a mistake. She was interviewed on Grit TV and I bought without checking her Bio. She formely worked at the Wall Street Journal as the front page editor. We all know thier performance during the run-up to the Irag War and there general right wing slant on the issues of the day.
As stated above, the entire article is a crock because it is predicated on the phony 9-11 story that is as full of holes and contradictions as a bad hollywood screenplay. Amerika is doomed given the average joe six-pack mentality and naivety. Go watch football and shop and be good little children, big daddy's gonna take care of all the evil-doers, trust us, we wouldn't lie to you folks!! Or better yet, just vote for obama...
This sure feels like Congress sold our government to the Israelis.
The selling of America to the corporations goes back to "Santa Clara County vs. Southern Pacific Railroad" over a hundred years now.
Mayer made a good point in speaking to Moyers the other night.
Many CIA types didn't participate in the torture program because they were wary of the legal ramifications. If there are no legal consequences for these crimes, what calculus will they use next time?
I'M VERY SORRY, JANE MAYER, but when I got to your mid section where you quote and admire Sen Jay Rockefeller for really giving the Bushies hell over torture, I found it made MOOT just about the entire article. FOR goodness sake Jane, Sen Jay Rockefeller voted FOR Pres Bush' 'Military Commissions Act' which passed into law last year.
*****So when you extol HIM as your American Idle you better know he Favors torture, and the Kangaroo military trials now being held at GITMO !! HE voted for Torture along with Sen Bill Nelson, Fla, and that goodie goodie Joseph Lieberman, and every Repubby in session.
***When you discuss 911, you also canonize Philip Zelikow, but forget that he and other 911 Commissioners have admitted they were lied to in testimony, and they glaringly failed to consider Bldg 7, World Trade Center==and Gee how did it fall to the ground without ever being hit by one of those nasty big JumboJets !!!AS the 911 Victims Relatives have strongly stated, that Commission and it's Report were a "Cover-up" of what really happened that Day !
**So Jane Mayer, if all the above print is supposed to help us understand or recover the heart and soul of our Nation, you sure are taking us down a VERY STRANGE PATH TO OZ !!!
AS for America's heritage, like the European nations from whom the founders migrated, the legacy of brutish imperialism came along. That does not mean there is not SOME pattern of evolution.
James Carroll writing for the Boston Globe 3 years ago explained that America was always seeking after its ideal of itself--as that free nation, yet negotiating with elements that were adhered to its darkest past traditions. Since a nation gets a birthchart at its point of inception, ours has the sun in Cancer, sign of the past and traditions. This is also the sign of bloodlines and family ties; but the nation's moon is in the advanced-thinking, freedom-loving, invention prone sign of Aquarius. This combination of sun and moon is out of synch, causing a restlessness in the population. It truly marks the battle between the past and its hold on our mass psyche and the ideals to which the nation as an entity was born to aspire.
As for those who favor methods of "eradicating" terror (by using it), theirs too is a long legacy. Since I believe in reincarnation, it's easy for me to see those who would use torture as the same ones hired by the church-state to torture confessions out of heretics. The savage aspect of some persons has never been overcome; but when a society itself condones or looks away from such practices, ALL carry some of the karmic burden and are apt to share in its inevitable blowback.
The point the article makes about Muslims seeing in these prisoners' lack of options a verdict of hopelessness is powerful. Hopelessness, along with lack of funds, desperation, anger and vengeance certainly fuels the next generation of would-be warriors/terrorists. In metaphysics it's believed that the thoughts focused upon produce results. Well, Bush focusing on "evil" has indeed increased its presence here and abroad.
It's time to stop pretending that the 9-11 attacks were carried out by a handful of box-cutter-carrying terrorists and the Bush administration just happened to step in and take advantage of the situation ..
duh!
Even the so-called critics of the Bush administration's post 9-11 behavior refuse to face the obvious ..
At the very least the Bush administration knew the attacks were coming and decided to let them happen.
No other conclusion is plausible.
If it was really just negligence on their part, they never once apologized for failing to protect America, they never once offered to resign for failing to protect America.
"... the human rights violations at Abu Ghraib and elsewhere were not the work of a few "rotten apples" on the bottom, but rather the result of irresponsible leadership at the top."
Neither of these simplistic alternatives comes close to explaining or exorcizing Abu Ghraib. It is not a few bad apples at either end that we can simply pick out and toss from the batch. We are in a somewhat worse pickle than that.
Most of us are in the thrall of ideologies - what Walter Davis calls "fantasmatic consciousness" in his perceptive if badly written book "Death's Dream Kingdom." We have carefully repressed the monsters in the American psyche for 60 years and probably longer, and they are now popping up behind every tree. Stand by, we're in for more.
Since nearly all of us (including educated progressives) refuse to submit to guilt (a tool of manipulative religion, right?) or any form of negativity, hand-wringing, bad feeling and the like, we stand by default with Harry Truman in "never losing a night's sleep" over the eradication of Hiroshima and Nagasaki on the day we became the world's foremost mega-terrorist dominatrix.
We don't torture to acquire information. We don't torture because Cheney made us do it. We torture because we have turned into a race of predatory sadomasochists. Individuals with psychosexual disorders do not have a good prognosis for cure, and I suspect neither do societies.
But simply substituting another ideology or making intellectual amends isn't going to do the trick or make America sane again. We need to sit down and eat worms. We need to feel as bad as we are. We need stultified shock. We need to understand how powerless we have become to fix ourselves. Some sobbing and screaming is perhaps in order, because simply voting for somebody nicer than George Bush is not going to be the magic fix. The last time we had an opportunity to vote about our own mental health was 1945. It was a bad wrong turn, and we are far down that road now, in a dream world of American vigilantism and exceptionalism and potency and false optimism.
You and I, ladies and gentlemen of the enlightened left, are kidding ourselves if we think we can stand outside history and repair our broken country just by impeaching a few rascals, though I will admit it wouldn't be a bad start.
I can remember my father, who was an FBI agent, talking with his friends about the Nuremburg Trials. His primary comment was that if the Germans had won, our leaders would have been in a similar docket especially over the deliberate bombing of civilian populations(i.e. Dresden). He was privilege to enough info that he felt the trials were a mistake since it set a standard we could not meet - in the future have our leaders tried under the same format.
In other words, we were and are hypocrites in this affair
Immanuel Kant wrote: "Never do anything in a time of war that you will regret in a time of peace." While Cheney and company have no regrets and should be sitting in the dock in the Hague, the rest of us should take Kant'swords to heart and Ms Mayer's as well.
Bryan D: You like so many folks who can't write and write on the Internet you show your frustration and anger by using four letter words. What you show is your ignorance. Please clean up your act, grow up, or go elsewhere.
Well, well......just a tad too late, don't you think?? Most Americans were "high-fiving" and cheering when the bombs and missiles began to rain down on Iraq in the unnecessary war of choice for Israel in Iraq. Over 100 prisoners died in US captivity after 9/11, and even DOD admits 34 were MURDERED! Most in America have completely swallowed the false flag attacks on 9/11, and are not smart enough to see that the 911 Commission report is a whitewash.
Now that the evil has won, these unAmerican cowards who brought us the Iraq war, and torture, and murder slink back into academia, or to some think tank in DC. These war criminals will never be brought to justice, because YOU will not demand it. Obama has NO interest in having the American people get the truth about 11 Sept. So, add another to the list containing the attack on the USS Liberty, JFK's assassination, and Vincent Foster's murder.
But, this time, over 4100 Americans have died, with over 30,000 wounded, and the final tab will be $2-3 Trillion. Folks, that is 2 to 3 THOUSAND BILLION dollars. Yet, I read that the expenditure of about $10 Billion a year for 20 years is needed to fix all the bridges that need repair/replacement in the USA. Now, where do you want to spend your money?? For Americans, or Israel??
"WE CAN'T HAVE ACQUITTALS! WE HAVE GOT TO HAVE CONVICTIONS!"
Let's remember that these people are only "SUSPECTS." They haven't been charged with any crime. After what this administration has done (contaminated) to every branch of gov't., including Congress, one should be ashame to be a Republican.
The Nazis and their German population had a saying as things got worse and worse for them under their own tyranny---"Aurhausen," meaning "there is no choice, there is no alternative" but to follow their self-referential and self-destructive belief-system to the very catastrophic end. The ancient Israelites and post-Holocaust Jews today have their own expression/phrase that means exactly the same thing---expressing to anybody outside a willful choice to turn away from the demands and compromises and changes of the real (outside, multi-sided) world....So it seems it has come to be America's turn to say this, even though it wasn't true before and isn't now. Except for people too fat, proud, selfish and inexcusably naive to think for a moment that it is they who must change in order to get out of hell....We can at least speak to interrupt their murderous fantasies. Do it where and how you can. The provincial Ugly American has a whole lot of guns and bombs to run out of....
skippyagogo41 July 27th, 2008 1:12 pm
Thanks for a bit of real history.
americans not as bad as the nazi. Now I have heard it all. What planet are we living on? I can honestly say that only a handful of strange inmates would agree with that idea. Sure if we lost Ike and Macarthur would be shot - the only difference would have been at least we gave Donitz and Speer and Homma a trial. Listen, were a good country, we have done many a horrible thing - but to equate GI Joe with SS storm troopers and Japanese guards at Battaan is ridiculous. Come on folks - with this kind of stuff we will never get the public to support us on universal care, living wages and affordable housing. Don't kill the common dreams we all have!
marc
American's then were not as bad as the nazis, to argue that they were is something people who don't read or understand history might believe.
American's now... That's a different thing isn't it? Bush has launched a war for oil, (much like hitler launched a war for 'livingspace' or the Japanese Empire launched a war for oil and empire) he's ordered the torturing of suspects and has had his gov't set up show trials that would have made the soviets blush.
The real diff about the idea of post war trials is that the allies allowed for the defendants to be found 'not guilty'. Hitler and his thugs would never have allowed such a thing. Bush today has no intention of allowing any of those at Gitmo to be found 'not guilty' either. The show trials Hitler would have wanted to have are being held by bush's present day america. Not a very good thing to happen to your country.
Atrocities in war are a staple, but we're not in a real war. The usa is occupying two countries and making noises about launching a war against Iran to distract the so-called electorate from the debacle of the last 7 years. There's a good reason that the people who founded the UN stated that it was War itself that was the supreme war crime.
For every type of Dresden atrocity there was another committed by the Nazi's. What the allies did at Dresden was matched in brutality by what the Germans did in Ukraine. I say that not to justify their actions, but to point out that had the world not gone to war in the first place those atrocities would not have occured. I'll be clear, I didn't mean to suggest that appeasement would have worked either. The peace treaty of Versaiiles was greatly to blame for the outbreak of war in the next generation. Marshal Foch (leader of the western armies in WWI) was off by 64 days when he said of the treaty of V that it was nothing more than a twenty year ceasefire.
Jane Mayer writes:
"While the Bush administration can point proudly to its record of no terrorists attacks on America since 2001, its progress in bringing the perpetrators of the September 11th attacks to justice is less impressive. The administration certainly could claim any number of top Al Quaeda scalps. Yet as of June 2008, both Osama Bin Laden and Ayman el-Zwahiri remained at large. The government's own statistics, meanwhile, showed that the number of terrorist attacks around the world, and the estimation of the threats posed by Al Quada, were growing."
Although Jane Mayer's recent book is an excellent resource and her highlighting of the Bush administration's perfidy on torture as official US policy to the mainstream media is commendable, the foregoing analysis is simply pathetic. Take each of these four sentences, one at a time.
Prior to 9/11, there had been only a meagre and comparatively pale handful of successful international terrorist strikes on US soil in the country's entire history, regardless of who was president and what the nation's foreign policies were. There was the truck bombing of the World Trade Center parking structure in the early 90's, and an armed assault by Puerto Rican nationalists on the House of Representatives in the early 50's. You can add the Robert Kennedy and McKinley asssassinations if you want to stretch the meaning of "international terrorist" inspired attacks that far. Pearl Harbor was an act of war. How can Bush supposedly point with pride to the absence of a 9/11 followup disaster as causal proof of anything?
Put concisely, the Bush regime's "progress" in bringing bin Laden or Zwahiri to justice is nonexistent. The neo cons scoff at the whole law enforcement model of seeking "justice" from the outset. This is war. They want these guys dead or alive. And dead is always easier and preferable, because it avoids the messy prospect of whatever might possibly emerge at a trial, no matter how rigged that tribunal might be.
Second, the White House and the Pentagon's psy ops propaganda machine have incessantly claimed various Al Quaeda "scalps" (interesting choice of terms, that) while waging their war on terror simultaneously with their war upon Iraq during the last six years. Remember the all-purpose boogeyman Zarkawi? He always surfaced, Zelig-like, to foment an atrocity or two just when the Iraqi insurgency and civil war was flaring up, conveniently putting an outside-agitator evil face on things, until he was finally smote down by a Hellfire missle (so that a power struggle over control of "Al Quaeda in Iraq" could become the focus of US media attention). How about Hamdan, Lind, el-Zubadei, and Moussasoui?
Best of all, Khalid Sheik Mohammed is a really, really big scalp - he masterminded everything since the grassy knoll incident in Dallas back in '63, if you want to believe his water board induced confession like the 911 Commission chose to. KSM also personally is volunteering to take the rap for the beheading of Daniel Pearl, so nobody would needs address any more awkward questions towards the Pakistani ISI (who turned KSM over to the CIA in the first place).
Yes indeed, Bin Laden and Zawhiri remain at large today (or is it Memorex?)' somewhere in those damn northwest territory border tribal areas within the great arc of instability. How convenient for all concerned with perpetuating war and paramilitary derring do on a global scale.
Small wonder, therefore, that terrorist attacks statistically are up all over the world, except for within the borders of the United States of America.
That's just what Al Quaeda always wanted.
And that's just what George Bush hoped for, too, when he babbled his testosterone crazed adolescent schoolyard slogans about killing Them over There, so we all can sleep tight over here.
Bill from Saginaw
I'm going to end this discussion. I hear your viewpoints, but do not agree 100%. thanks for hearing mine. Good talking with you all. Maybe I'll try again some other day. Not sure this is the site for me. I;m more in the FDR vein - and all along I though I was the progressive. Wish you all good luck - keep fighting the good fight - but remember we are a good country deep inside - lets get ready to put a good spit shine on ourselves and become that city on a hill. Peace from Mt Olivet KY. God Bless
"seven years after al-Qaeda's attack on America...."
shoulda stopped reading right there. How much sense can she make after opening like that?
Anyway, al Qaeda, Taliban, and Osama himself are creations of yhe us- Ziggy and Carter at he beginning, then forever after CIA. So you don't like haw they are acting now? It's called "blowback"- deal with it.
But not by jailing and torturing tens of thousands of Muslims without charges.
and not by bombing, strafing, sniping, and murdering Muslims in Afghanistan and Iraq
they should be bombing their own stupid selves
the u.s. military thinks it's ok to kill "suspects". I have yet to hear a word of complaint about this. True, we do not like it when they hit civilians- and it seems like they always do. But allowing them to bomb certified "suspects" means permission to bomb innocents also. And it seems to clear the way for the neo con form of jurisprudence- not really original. It is a verbatim copy of the one made famous by Joe Stalin.
Soul's done gone, Mayer. See if you can find it anywhere
Now pay attention to marc melchiori, who is going to pick up his marbles and go home rather than entertain the possibility that we precious Americans could, at heart, be compared to the beasts of northern Europe or the fanatical yellow hordes. Marc needs to read up on storytelling - the collective myths about virtuous "us" versus terrible "them," always invented by the victors. We are living in a world made almost entirely of fiction, and to get around in it we need to learn cognitive skills comparable to driving on ice.
Of course human beings are constituted the same. If there were something substantially different between the sadomasochistic pathologies of the Germans, the Americans and the Congolese, some expert would have noticed it by now. What makes Americans (whose appetite for mass annihilation beats anybody's) so morally superior to the population of any other part of the world. Is it that we eat more beef? That we grew up watching Ozzie and Harriet? Wake up Marc. The human race has a shared disease.
As for Dr. Zelikow's comments, I think the examination of this man's 911 commission work showed him to be quite untrustworthy. See Shenon's, The Commission
"Seven years after al-Qaeda's attacks on America," ...Not!
"as the Bush administration slips into history," ...Don't count on it.
"While the Bush administration can point proudly to its record of no terrorist attacks on America since 2001," ...And tiger prevention too; no tigers on 5th Avenue.
"its progress in bringing the perpetrators of the September 11 attacks to justice is less impressive" ...Duh!
"Yet it is hard to know if the Bush administration's success represents the vanquishing of new credible threats, or rather the absence of any." ...Double Duh!!
Nothing Exists.
She could have shortened this article by 75%.
but to equate GI Joe with SS storm troopers and Japanese guards at Battaan is ridiculous."
Its not only ridiculous, its shameful.
The Waffen SS had little in common with the Wehrmacht troops. Not in training, not in equipment nor in purpose.
No training of our special forces is anything like the training of the SS, especially the officers.
Equating America with Nazi Germany is only possible if you use different time frames. But if anyone is speaking of the period from 1937 to 1945.....no comparison at all.
If you study the National Socialist Party you can see the metamorphisis as it grew in power. There is no resemblence to America except in its early years from say 34-36 when many good things were accomplished.
I hate it when the left beats up on the left - the only victor is the right. I thought only the right were hostile and intolerant to ideas and opinion. Wow was I wrong. I have entertained all scenarios all my like - more so than most folks on this sight. How many of you folks have entertained the possibility of loosing a years planting of corn and soy and a full herd of cattle from a freak tornado and the baseball hail that follows in its path? Lolt of folks here need to grow up and experience how harsh life can be. how bout this voxclamantis - try burying your first born after watching him suffer from birth complications - did he have a shared disease. No just a 3 month old who was a gift from God. Don't tell me about marbles boy - thats agame for kids like you noy for men like me who bust hump to feed sorry sacks like you in you. If you got all the answers be a man and run for office and make a change - rather than sit in your soiled undies in your moms basement and blog all day. With the attitude of this crown we can expect a mccain predidency in Nov.
Oh for crying out loud Marc... I'm disagreeing with you, not invalidating you as a human being. Besides, I thought you'd left. What are you doing still here? Because you're a smart guy and cd is more fun. I'm serious about the storytelling. I agree with you that our soldiers have behaved better than SS troopers probably actually did, but the recruits are the same - testosterone addled kids who will do as they are trained. Training varies from regime to regime, but the human raw material - our appetite for abusing one another - our dark, aggressive underside - is the same regardless of race or country. History is a collective myth. There is some truth in it, but you have to be careful believing it completely. Sorry about your misfortunes.
There are some who take offense at Americans being compared to the Germans of WWII yet none of them have given a valid reason why such a comparison is "ridiculous".
What is it that makes Americans, by nature "More Virtous" ?
If you can not claim a genetic difference , then all you have left is a difference in Culture or Political systems.
I would point out it a fact that US officials deliberately spoonfed disabled children radioactive isotopes sprinkled on cereal, that they injected peoples with plutonium directly, without their knowledge so as to measure the effects and that they experimented with mind control with MK Ultra experiments on mental patients just as examples.
Just study the Filipino-American as example, then detail to me why Americans were more "Virtous". It estimated that as many as 1 million Filipino Civilians were slaughtered by the Americans. They were starved to death and buried in mass graves. No quarter shown to men women or children.
Filipinos saw their villages burned to the ground and were locked up in concentration camps where many starved to death.
How is any of that more "Virtous"? Someone at some level justified all this with a rather tortured reasoning just as they now justify torturing prisoners or as the justify developing germs and bacterias that will target specific races.
I would suggest that the only difference is in fact one of Political and legal systems and of the moral outrage the citizens of a given country would have against such practices.
I would also suggest that condemning that very outrage as shameful because it equates the "Virtous American" with the "Evil Nazi" will only mean the Government of America feels even less bound to hold to the concept of Human rights.
The reason they now openly practice and support torture is because they can count on so many Americans buying into that "Virtous American" myth and getting more outraged at being compared to the Germans by the critics, then they are at the acts of its Government.
Keep clinging to that myth and you will just devolve even more as a society.
pk
"Senator John McCain's opposition to torture surely runs as deep as that of any politician in America. "
Meaning: not at all.
The Brits had their revolution and formed a republic which went straight to being a dictatorship and a military wallah invited the dead kings son back to be king again, That says something about kings and republics, not sure what but this country is sliding with the greatest of ease towards a dictatorship.
This country elected a congenital idiot as presdent, not once but twice, good God. What were the general population scared of, terrorists, as a nation we behaved like cowards scared of someone elses fairy tales, The soul of this country is commerce, everything as a price, everything. Sorry but you can talk till you are blue in the face and nothing will change, elect a democrat and there will be no substantial changes, the presdent will still have far too much power and will be in the hands of them that provided the fortunes needed to run a two year election campaign. Try a 30 day campaign like the brits do.
The constitution is mostly about property rights and very little human rights. and will never change because the system has within it the seeds of its own destruction, commerce and the republicans have fed and watered the seeds and nowhere do I hear of another continental congress to try again to get it right.
Those secessionists in Vermont are on the right track.
Phillip Zelikow must have been in on the careful planning for 9/11 or he wouldn't have been the 9/11 commission director later. And while we're at it, how come Common Dreams never publishes anything by Paul Craig Roberts?
There's a nifty little article on CounterPunch called "Are You Ready to Face the Facts About Israel?"
For more 'illustrious' actions by U.S., check out book by Gen. Smedley Butler, USMC (ret).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smedley_Butler
War Is A Racket
Major General Smedley Butler, USMC. He joined the Marine Corps when the Spanish American War broke out, earned the Brevette Medal during the Boxer Rebellion ...
www.informationclearinghouse.info/article4377.htm
Smedley Butler on Interventionism
Smedley Butler on Interventionism. -- Excerpt from a speech delivered in 1933, by Major General Smedley Butler, USMC. War is just a racket. ...
www.fas.org/man/smedley.htm
He was also known for exposing an anti-FDR plot by a cabal of US business interests, which allegedly included many families who support the current Bush regime and have receieved many no bid contracts for their support(read bribes)
"Rumours of the plot reached Washington, where the Committee on Un- American Activities (CUAA)--was already exposing fascist intrigues. Its cochairmen were John McCormack (D MA) and Samuel Dickstein (D NY). CUAA got in touch with Smedley Butler: did the general have anything to tell them? After prying out all the plans he could, Butler asked a friend, an experienced newsman, to confirm the whole incredible scheme. The reporter visited twice with an agent of the conspirators (a wounded Marine vet) and set down his findings.
Secret executive hearings of CUAA opened November 20, 1934. Sworn testimony showed that the plotters represented notable families --Rockefeller, Mellon, Pew, Pitcairn, Hutton; and great enterprises-- Morgan, Dupont, Remington, Anaconda, Bethlehem, Goodyear, GMC, Swift, Sun.... Some people named as plotters laughed, all denied everything."
"The reader who wishes to examine the official testimony is referred to the government report, `Investigation of Nazi Propaganda Activities and Investigation of Certain Other Propaganda Activities: Public Hearings Before the Special Committee on Un-American Activities, House of Representatives, Seventy-third Congress, Second Session, at Washington, DC, December 29, 1934. Hearings No. 73-D.C.-6, Part 1.' Extracts of the censored testimony are revealed in the books A MAN IN HIS TIME, by John L. Spivak [NY: Horizon Press, 1967], and ONE THOUSAND AMERICANS, by George Seldes [NY: Boni & Gaer, 1947]" (p 140).
http://www.eclectica.org/v1n1/reviews/wharton_plot.html
"There are some who take offense at Americans being compared to the Germans of WWII yet none of them have given a valid reason why such a comparison is "ridiculous".
The records of the two should certainly be enough for anyone. Babi Yar, Treblinka, Warsaw Chetto, Auschwitz, the cleansing of the lesser before the war, the Gestapo. If anyone believes there is any comparison between the Gestapo and any of our law enforcement organizations there is really not much to say. Its pure fantasy. The history, even the living hiostory is still here to tell you the difference.
I suggest that there are quite a few, starting in Spain and ending in Manchuria that would disagree with the premise that the Axis powers had a lot of legitimate grivences.
Ethopia would certainly not agree that Italy had legitimate grivences against them.
It may be fashionable to say, but its simply not true that there is any comparison between America and any of these powers from WW2.
Sure you can pick a few of our mistakes, but that won't balance out....sort of like a BB on that side and an Abhrams A1 on our side of the scale.
This attempted fascist takeover of the United States is also detailed in the book "Trading With the Enemy: The Nazi-American Money Plot, 1933-1949" by Charles Higham. Unfortunately, the book is out-of-print. I have two copies.
Hey Marc, I went to school down your way. That's right, I attended a state-supported university in Kentucky...and I attended it on the GI Bill. So don't get all Holier-Than-Thou with me because I may have dated your wife before you met her.
>>Ethopia would certainly not agree that Italy had legitimate grivences against them
What was Americas legitimate grievance against the peoples of cambodia, and Laos and Vietnam, and The Philipines and Iraq?
Again as par for the course you try and advance some innate virtue in Americans. It does not exist. They set up Concentration camps in the Philipines and killed as many (if not more) Filipinos as the japanese did.
The lesson to be learned from Germany is that ANY nation can collapse towards such a state. No nation is immune to it. All it needs is for that Countries citizens to believe they are somehow superior to anothers, which is the very thing you suggest.
Germany did not adopt the nazis over night. Laws and protections eroded over the years using the same techniques your own President uses, starting with the "Reichstag Fire".
PK
Thomas More - you miss the point entirely - our conduct has been conducted for several centuries.
No one is equating our GIs with the SS that I can see. (although listening to the tales of (mis)conduct committed by GIs in Europe and in the Pacific from my fathers friends would possibly give one pause for thought.)
Have you talked to VietNam era GIs who have some pretty horrific tales to tell? These are offset by others who prevented even more cases like My Lai.