News of the Month

December 8, 2001

Well, we seem to have bombed Afghanistan into submission. The old mob, the Taliban, has fled for their lives, and the new mob, the so-called “Northern Alliance,” is coming into power. So we trade one pack of bandits for another. Only this pack of bandits is on our side. For now. … I believe. Hmmm; isn’t that what we said about the Taliban only a year or so ago? Anyway, we have found another reason to scream and shout that Afghanistan is our enemy – they grow (gasp!) opium poppies! Never mind that because we destroyed their water supply with our terrorist bombing. According to the Austin American-Statesman, farmers there have had to move from the water-intensive crop of wheat (which they can no longer grow, thanks to us) to the less water-intensive crop of opium poppies.

And did you see in the American-Statesman last week that the US military has already decided on the next 7 fish to shoot in the barrel? They are the Philippines, Yemen, Somalia, Malaysia, Indonesia, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan. What do these nations have in common? Well, for one, they are utterly unable to defend themselves against our terrorism, making them an ideal “enemy” for the people in power – less likelihood of “our boys” being killed. Unless, of course, it’s we ourselves who kill “our boys” – you heard, I suppose, about the American deaths as a result of “friendly fire”? Friendly fire – I bet those American soldiers thought “Well; at least it’s friendly” right before they were blown to bits.

I saw some really nifty bumper stickers over the past month – like, “Proud American – for Peace” and “Stop Terrorism – Impeach Bush!” Think about it – this supposed “war on terrorism” is actually a war of terrorism: we are dumping tons of bombs onto a country and a people that have endured some of the most wretched conditions of anyone on earth; and those bombs are terrorizing them into … what – submission? Like firing an elephant gun into a squirrel – carcass. A long time ago, Thomas Jefferson said, “I weep for my country when I reflect that God is just.” Well, what we have done to the people of Afghanistan brings tears to my eyes – tears of shame – and tears of fear, that our government and its “leaders” have put us into the position of international terrorists. If God doesn’t smite us for it, the rest of the world will.

How did we get here? How did we get moved from a nation governed by “we the people,” and “dedicated to the proposition that government of the people, by the people, and for the people shall not perish from the earth” to a nation where an illegally enthroned president and a bought-and-paid-for Congress and court system can engage in international terrorism abroad and enact blatantly repressive legislation at home to deprive us of our rights under the Constitution, with hardly a peep from anyone?

There are a few of us speaking out – and Jim Hightower is one of the best examples. Yes, Mr. Hightower is officially a Democrat, with Green leanings – but nonetheless, he is an ally in the fight we Libertarians are also engaged in, against the combination of mega-government and mega-corporations that’s doing these things in our – the people’s – name. Listen to what he says about the deceptively named “PATRIOT” law:

“Foreign terrorists are not the only ones assaulting Americans. Try our own Congress.

“In a furious haste, trying to posture politically and look like they were “doing something” about stopping terrorism, our Washington lawmakers have just rammed a liberty-crushing, privacy-invading, democracy-busting, bureaucracy-fattening mish-mask of new police powers down our throats. They cynically titled it the ‘USA Patriot Act,’ but real patriots like Sam Adams, George Washington, Tom Paine, old Ben Franklin, Jimmy Madison, and Tom Jefferson would gag and upchuck at the mere sight of this package of anti-democratic nastiness.

“You’ve likely heard that this law gives police sweeping new authority to search our homes and computers, new ways to listen in on our phone conversations and e-mails, and new power to arrest us without any charges. But you might not have heard that obscure provisions in this act shift the FBI's primary mission from solving crimes to domestic surveillance – it's now to be an internal spy agency. Worse, The Washington Post reports that the law also empowers the CIA, for the first time, to snoop on citizens in this country, even allowing the agency to use the secret, nearly unlimited, star-chamber powers of federal grand juries.

“What they’ve created here is a massive spying apparatus of unprecedented scope that essentially is authorized to violate civil liberties wholesale, going far beyond the narrow focus on terrorists who operate here. Forget legal finesse, this thing is a sledgehammer, and it’s our Constitution that they're pounding. One of Attorney General John Ashcroft’s hit men for gutting our civil liberties with this law blithely told the Post: ‘We are going to have to get used to a new way of thinking,’ he said.

“No thank you. The freedoms that the founders put in place are not trifles to be tossed whenever autocrats find them inconvenient.”

There are people speaking out all over the country. For example, Katie Sierra, a teen-ager in Charleston, West Virginia, wore a T-shirt that said, “When I saw the dead and dying Afghani children on TV, I felt a newly recovered sense of national security. God Bless America.” Think about that. That is what the propagandists in the government and its managed media are asking us to believe – and that is just what’s wrong with this entire nation right now. Oh – Katie? Well, the school refused to protect her from the violent physical assaults she suffered from her fellow students, and the state Supreme Court refused to uphold her right of free expression, so her mother had to withdraw her from school, teach her at home, and turn in her work via computer.

Benjamin Franklin said, “Those who exchange essential liberty for temporary security shall have neither liberty nor security.” This is where we are. Do any of you actually believe that the laws that have been enacted recently are really for the prevention of terrorism? (Other people’s terrorism, I mean, not our own.) Will spending billions of dollars on a completely unworkable “anti-ballistic missile system” really stop people from using airplanes – or even suitcases – as bomb delivery systems? [Hmph.] The system sure won’t stop ballistic missiles. (I speak from personal experience here: I worked on that ABM system for a year or so – I know how ineffective and dangerously vulnerable it is on a real field of battle.) Or do any of you really believe that turning the FBI into the Gestapo will make us any safer?

It was scary enough when they said, “I’m from the Government, and I’m here to help.” But it’s terrifying to think that someday they might say, “I’m from the Government, and I’m here to take you in” – to a secret investigation, unconstrained by Constitutional protections, and unbounded in its authority? If you think I’m making this up, rent a movie called Missing, a film by Costa-Gavras, telling the true story of Ed Horman. Mr. Horman went to Chile in 1973 to find his son Charles, who was “disappeared” by the Pinochet junta, which was sponsored and funded by the CIA to overthrow the democratically-elected government of Salvador Allende. Charles was, of course, dead – thanks to the United States and the CIA.

Oh – and speaking of the CIA, America’s first casualty in the so-called “war” in Afghanistan was a CIA operative, Mike Spann, was killed in a riot in a prison in which he was acting as an “interrogator.” He was a paramilitary trooper in the agency's commando arm, which is equipped to arm and train local forces and to conduct covert assaults. I’m sure he was being gentle to the prisoners he interrogated, careful of their rights under international law, and oh, so respectful of them as fellow human beings. Yeah, right.