Scare of the Union

http://www.socialistworker.org/2006-1/574/574_03_Scare.shtml

Bush exploits September 11 to go after more of our rights

JUST TRUST us, and we?ll keep you safe. That?s been the Bush administration?s 
trump card, used over and over since September 11--and it was played again in 
George Bush?s State of the Union address.

The White House has been on the offensive since the New York Times revealed in 
December that the National Security Agency (NSA)--under Bush?s orders--flouted 
the law by monitoring phone calls and e-mails of U.S. citizens without a 
warrant.

The administration should be reeling from the exposure of this latest deception. 
?By the way,? Bush said, speaking in Pittsburgh in 2004, ?any time you hear the 
United States government talking about wiretaps, it requires--a wiretap requires 
a court order. Nothing has changed.? That was a flat-out lie.

But the administration knows it can score points because there is no opposition 
within mainstream politics willing to challenge it on the ?war on terror.? After 
complaining about Bush?s failure to get rubber-stamp approval for the wiretaps 
from a secret intelligence court, the Democrats? last presidential candidate, 
John Kerry, nevertheless assured the New York Times, ?We all support 
surveillance.?

Kerry is right about the Democratic Party supporting surveillance--in its 
current Bush Lite phase, and throughout its history--but public opinion runs the 
other way.

A New York Times/CBS News poll found that 68 percent of people were somewhat or 
very concerned about losing civil liberties as a result of measures enacted by 
the Bush administration. Only when the threat of terrorism is thrown into the 
equation does a slim majority of people say they support the NSA wiretapping.

Missing from the Washington debate is any questioning of the administration?s 
cover story--that their spies and infiltrators are going after the ?terrorist 
threat.? The record since September 11 shows something different: The White 
House exploited the attacks as the cover for pursuing its right-wing, pro-war 
agenda--and targeting anyone who got in the way.

In the witch-hunt of Arabs and Muslims that followed 9/11, more than 1,000 
people were rounded up, but not a single one was linked to the attacks.

To judge from the Pentagon?s database of ?security threat? 
investigations--exposed, to much less fanfare, around the same time as the NSA 
wiretapping--the military?s prime targets for domestic surveillance are antiwar 
activists. This fits with other evidence of local, state and federal 
spying--from activists turning up on no-fly lists to documented infiltration and 
harassment of peace groups.

These Big Brother tactics are being directed not at a security threat to 
ordinary people, but at a political threat to the White House and the federal 
government.

This is the U.S. government?s longstanding approach--justifying state repression 
of dissidents with rhetoric about protecting ordinary citizens.

The FBI?s COINTELPRO operation, started in the 1950s, was supposed to defend 
national security and deter violence. Instead, it perpetrated deadly violence 
against leading activists and organizations in the Black Power and civil rights 
movements and other social struggles.

Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were executed in 1953 for allegedly giving the 
ex-USSR atomic secrets--in reality, their state-sponsored murder was part of the 
federal government?s campaign against the Communist Party.

A. Mitchell Palmer, the U.S. attorney general under Democrat Woodrow Wilson 
during the working-class upheaval after the First World War, declared that 
?trying to protect the community against moral rats, you sometimes get to 
thinking more of your trap?s effectiveness than of its lawful construction.? His 
Palmer Raids put as many as 10,000 socialists, anarchists and radicals behind 
bars.

According to the Bush administration--and its co-thinkers in both mainstream 
parties--the way to stop terrorism is greater police powers: more spies, more 
bugs, more interrogations, more prisons.

But none of this will stop the threat of terrorism against the U.S.--because its 
real source is the greater crimes the U.S. government carries out around the 
world, either directly through military force, or indirectly through its 
political and economic policies.

The occupation of Iraq is only the latest proof of the fact that the U.S. 
government is the greatest purveyor of violence--and terror--in the world. This 
is what stokes bitterness and hatred toward America--as does the shredding of 
civil liberties and racist abuse toward Arabs and Muslims.

As the Defense Science Board concluded in a 2004 report, ?Muslims do not ?hate 
our freedom,? but rather, they hate our policies.? People in the Middle East, 
the board said, can see that the ?American occupation of Afghanistan and Iraq 
has not led to democracy there, but only more chaos and suffering.?

Therefore, the real solution isn?t more spies or wiretaps or repression, but 
changing the policies that cause the hatred.

The obvious first step is the immediate and unconditional withdrawal of U.S. and 
?coalition? forces from Iraq and Afghanistan. The next would be ending U.S. 
support for Israel?s war on the Palestinians.

But these conflict with the U.S. government?s long-term interests--the 
projection of U.S. power in the Middle East and beyond. The occupations of Iraq 
and Afghanistan--and Palestine--are central to this project.

Bush may talk about protecting ordinary people from ?terrorism,? but he and the 
rest of the Washington political establishment are committed to policies of 
violence and terror around the world that make us less safe, not more.


Alan

"Can't you see we're still here,
Can't you see we're still here,
Singing loud; Singing clear,
We shall not go under,
We're still here."

Nemesis Peace Centre

http://www.veloceraptor.free-online.co.uk/protector.html

Abuse of Women and Children

http://theoriginalfirebird.blogspot.com/

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http://lordcerneabbas.blogspot.com/

Absolute Anarchy

http://lordcerneabbastoo.blogspot.com/

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