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National Security: The Big Fraud
Sheldon Richman
Campaign
For Liberty
Saturday, January 16th, 2010
The handwringing about the would-be Christmas Day airplane
bomber and the politicians' tiresome declarations that it will
never happen again miss the point: As long as the U.S. government
pursues its imperial program of invasion, regime change, occupation,
and sponsorship of corrupt governments in the Muslim world,
Americans will be targets for avengers. This does not excuse
the killing of innocents -- it merely points out an inevitable
chain of events.
It's either foreign intervention and retaliatory terrorism
or nonintervention and security. There's no third way.
We can't eat our cake and have it too. Every empire has reaped
a terrorist whirlwind. "Terror" is the tactic that
the weak use against the strong. The U.S. government unleashes
the most powerful "conventional" weapons known to
man, including pilotless killer drones operated like videogames
thousands of miles away. Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab sewed an
explosive into his underwear and ended up burning himself.
It is disgraceful that the choice between terrorism and security
is rarely publicly discussed in terms of the choice between
American imperialism and nonintervention. The empire is treated
as a given -- even by most so-called progressives -- as though
it were ordained by history. The American people are expected
to believe that the very existence of their society depends
on the U.S. government's policing the globe and using whatever
violence it deems appropriate (that is, whenever things do not
suit the interests of U.S. policymakers and their economic partners
in the "private" sector).
But this picture is precisely upside down. It is the imperial
program and the inevitable "war on terror" that threatens
Americans' way of life -- not to mention the very lives of people
in the lands that "our" government tramples. Government
in the United States has long regarded the liberties of Americans
as inconveniences standing in the way of bigger, nobler projects.
Since the attacks of September 11 -- not a bolt from the blue
but a roughly predictable consequence of U.S. foreign intervention
-- the usurpations have accelerated. The "war on terror"
functions like a blank check both to justify curtailment of
particular freedoms (such as freedom from surveillance) and
to instill an embarrassing submissiveness in a people whose
predecessors rebelled against similar oppression. Imagine the
first few generations of Americans letting themselves be treated
the way we are treated at airports. "You may not leave
your seat beginning one hour before landing." "Oh,
okay. Whatever you say, dear leader, as long as you protect
me." When the TSA begins requiring passengers effectively
to strip in front of the newest inspection devices, who will
raise a word in protest?
The sad irony is that none of these measures -- and nothing
even more severe -- will make us safer. What we call terrorism
will always be cheap, flexible, and at least one step ahead
of the plodding, clueless authorities. Al-Qaeda is not an organization.
It's an idea and an open-ended set of tactics. Clear it out
of Afghanistan -- and it appears in Pakistan or Yemen or New
Jersey. When you step back and take a broader view, the U.S.
government looks like a big, pathetic, stupid giant trying to
catch a pesky, clever mouse.
The terrorists' advantage lies in the fact that bureaucracies
are institutionally stupid. Do we really need more proof after
the Christmas Day incident? Just as the SEC couldn't see Bernie
Madoff's fraudulent activities even when handed reams of evidence,
so the vaunted "national security apparatus" -- for
which Americans are compelled to pay hundreds of billions of
dollars every year -- couldn't stop a kid from Nigeria wearing
explosive briefs from getting on a plane, despite warnings from
his own father as well as other solid information.
The "protection" forced on us by the U.S. government
is an outright fraud. It can never deliver on its promise to
keep us safe because big organizations like the Department of
Homeland Security (!) are too riven by interagency rivalries,
informational distortions, and hierarchical tone-deafness to
work effectively. (The same is true for businesses that grow
large because of anti-competitive government privileges.) Letting
private companies protect themselves at their own expense would
have to work better.
Does this mean we must remain vulnerable? No. We'll find a
reasonable degree of safety when America comes home.
"When the people find they can vote themselves
money, that will herald the end of the republic."
- Fall Of The Republic - Buy
the DVD here
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INFOWARS:
BECAUSE THERE'S A WAR ON FOR YOUR MIND
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