October 3, 2006
by James Rothenberg

This is not a time to remain quiet. The heart and soul of our country hangs in the balance. We who claim to cherish American ideals of liberty and justice cannot also support a government that kills and maims wantonly, that tortures unapologetically, that disappears people and punishes dissenters and whistle blowers.

And yet this is a very quiet country. In growing part we have a default active armed force comprised of those with limited horizons and meager means to reach them. We troll for fresh faces in the neediest communities, even going so far as our Pacific island possessions to exploit their young, only too eager to make it out into the world for a buck, more bucks than they ever expected to see. But what a price some will pay. And about that large, illegal immigrant population politicians fret over.Uncle Sam needs you.

We are creating an army of mercenaries, backed up by contractors who are themselves mercenaries, handled in the field by political bureaucrats who are themselves mercenaries. And it is no matter because money is no object, because this money buys something you can't put a price on. Quiet.

Bush/Cheney along with the top-ranking fondly claim that our troops "asked to serve their country", knowing how soothing that is to the national mood. There was never any real question of a draft because of two simple equations. No draft equals quiet campuses. Quiet campuses equals a quiet country.

We have been in the war business for quite some time. It is our largest export. In the previous century (squeezing into the present one) no country has used their military in threat and deed as actively as we have. There is a record (albeit a silent one) and the count is over 100. George Bush has told his share of lies, but he's doubtless unaware of the biggest one. He claimed the United States is a peaceful nation.

The newest version of the "threat we face" (there has to be one) is the so-called "war on terrorism" against an ever expanding "axis of evil" (they don't like us), its nebulous description serving as useful cover for all manner of extra-legal affairs, including outright aggression, a Nuremberg matter.  This so-called "war on terrorism" disguises what we are really after, and have been after since the end of WW II, namely the "stabilization" (we control it, with or without our military) of the resource-rich Middle East and now the Caspian Sea basin. The purpose of this is to gain leverage against a future rival, or group of rivals, such as China, Russia, even Japan, India, or a united Europe because controlling the vital energy resources on the planet is tantamount to controlling the world economy.

But as nice as it is to control the world economy most people would stop short of killing for it, and that's where the usefulness of the euphemism "war on terrorism" comes in. This leads to a problem. How to account for the seemingly infinite gullibility of the American public. Call it the "devotedness" problem, the willingness to believe whatever comes down from authority.

There was a fascinating study done in March 2006 by the sociology department at the University of Minnesota, yielding results that had researchers "pretty surprised". Quoting from the press release:

"From a telephone sampling of more than 2,000 households, university researchers found that Americans rate atheists below Muslims, recent immigrants, gays and lesbians and other minority groups in "sharing their vision of American society." Atheists are also the minority group most Americans are least willing to allow their children to marry.

"Even though atheists are few in number, not formally organized and relatively hard to publicly identify, they are seen as a threat to the American way of life by a large portion of the American public. "Atheists, who account for about 3 percent of the U.S. population, offer a glaring exception to the rule of increasing social tolerance over the last 30 years," says Penny Edgell, associate sociology professor and the study's lead researcher."

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Another study, by the Pew Research Center in August 2006, determined that the more education one had, the less likely one was to believe the Bible literally. The Bible is not the word of God according to14% of those polled with a high school or less education, 20% of those with some college, and 26% for college graduates.

The contradiction in these two studies may be only apparently irreconcilable . There is a folk school of thought that holds the more education you have, the less you can be trusted.

Intelligence services finding: War increases risk of terrorism.

We've been indirectly promised an endless war by our leaders, and by their deeds we know they are doing their best to keep that promise. Two leaked intelligence reports (British and US) serve as hardly needed corroboration, and indeed are yet another test for Bush/Cheney's true believers, who have miraculously passed all prior tests. On our shores the April 2006 National Intelligence Estimate (compendium view of 16 intelligence services) entitled Trends In Global Terrorism: Implications For The United States notes that " the Iraq conflict has become the ?cause célèbre' for jihadists, breeding a deep resentment of US involvement in the Muslim world and cultivating supporters for the global jihad movement".

The NIE also stated that the global jihadist movement is not shrinking (as we are told) but in truth is increasing in numbers while at the same time spreading geographically. Further, it predicts that terror attacks against American and Western targets could spread out from Islamic groups to non-religious, non-Muslim organizations. "Anti-US and anti-globalization sentiment is on the rise and fuelling other radical ideologies. This could prompt some leftist, nationalist or separatist groups to adopt terrorist methods to attack US interests."

The White House's pathetic, opt-repeated response to this leak was that it was only "because of our success against the leadership of al-Qaeda [that] the enemy is becoming more diffuse and independent". It must be noted that the White House is not unqualifiedly against government leaks.only the nasty "unauthorized" kind. Tony Snow, the professional face, said "Let's start with the obvious: since September 11, 2001, we have not been attacked." Let's be even more obvious. We were not attacked in the previous five years either.

The British leak came from the Defence Academy, and, like the NIE, was a distillation of thinking from within the military and intelligence services. Its key finding reads: "The war in Iraq . has acted as a recruiting sergeant for extremists across the Muslim world . The al-Qaeda ideology has taken root within the Muslim world and Muslim populations within Western countries. Iraq has served to radicalise an already disillusioned youth and al-Qaeda has given them the will, intent, purpose and ideology to act."

Revelations such as these are less shocking to the British population, already far less supportive of their government's war than we are, testimony to their being less afflicted by the "devotedness" problem. For the still afflicted here in the States, the "long, hard struggle" we are promised assures that no matter how many of our troops gets killed and no matter how many of our enemies gets killed, it will never be enough because you can't kill everyone and there will always be more. We have enemies because they have grievances. With us. The sanest strategy to reduce any level of violence directed at us is to seek to redress legitimate grievances.

It does have to be millions because hundreds didn't happen.

The biggest anti-war, anti-administration protests take place in our nation's capitol. For those there and for those at home observing hopefully, there is a fervent desire to see the crowd swell - is it 100,000? - many hundreds of thousands? - we feel that if only it was sufficiently large it might make some difference, but we don't know what sufficiently means.

A couple of hundred would have been enough, and they were already there. Suppose all the Democrats in Congress had gotten off their seats, picked up a sign, and stayed on the street until this thing ended (there were, and are, admirable exceptions). Democracy, liberty, and justice for all aren't being done indoors on days like that. Can you just picture the couple of hundred circling the White House, refusing to obey orders to disperse? What would be the lead story on the news that night? Was the situation that desperate to merit antics like that? Only if you truly opposed this most irresponsible and dangerous and criminal of administrations.

So we can patiently wait for a confession from our rulers in an infinity of politeness. We can  let our armed forces go on "protecting" us because they volunteered to do the job, but the act of volunteering does not imply complete freedom of choice, and, once volunteered, you cannot un-volunteer. Nobody in this country is clean because our government has sullied us, but for those to whom democracy, liberty, and justice are concepts that cannot be compromised, that exist a plane apart from empty, government slogans of war, there will be deep resistance to the hostility of this government.

The world does not hate America, not in the sense of hating its people. It doesn't hurt to credit others in the world with the intelligence we like to see in ourselves The world hates the aggressive and duplicitous nature of the American government that preaches lofty ideals while dealing to them from the bottom of the deck. The world did change on September 11, 2001. Our leaders exploited a national tragedy for material gain and it has been exploding in our face, indeed, the whole world's face, ever since then.

From what little I, or for that matter anyone else, understand about Jesus, our president's favorite philosopher, had he been president on that day, he would have welcomed the out-held hands of his brothers and sisters from around the globe, grieved for his losses, sought out the transgressors and the transgressors only, and, this above all, apologized for his own transgressions. If such had been the case, we would have an unheard of moral standing in this world, a power that is quite beyond military.the power of community.

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James Rothenberg [send him email] is a writer and activist.