Contrary To Popular Belief
for release 01-09-05
Washington D.C.
There is a rampant myth in America that we are at war. We are not at war. Congress has not declared war since 1941. That was after the airforce of a sovereign nation (Japan) attacked US soil at Pearl Harbor.
Even though the two events have been constantly compared, December 7, 1941 had very little in common with September 11, 2001. Japan was a nation. They had an army numbering in the millions in 1941. They had airplanes and ships and bombs and an industrial plant capable of making more. They were a tangible threat to America.
The 9/11 vandals numbered 19. They had no country, no industrial infrastructure, no army, no ships, no missiles, no airforce. They were a gang of religious nuts. Yes, they managed to wound this country in a very spectacular way, but so did another religious nut (Tim McVeigh.) The Oklahoma bombing was tragic as were the attacks on 9/11, but there was no army behind either of these aberrant acts, and no country. Both were crimes, not acts of war.
Congress has not declared war. But the president has claimed the mantle of a war-time commander-in-chief and the extraordinary powers that go with it. He has strutted in military garb like some TV Mussolini, he has invaded and occupied two countries, He has authorized programs to spy on our own citizens. He has detained and tortured prisoners illegally.
Al Queda is not a nation. It is nothing but a gang. There are probably more Crips in L.A. than there are Al Queda members in the world. Maybe we should just get the Crips to handle the war on terror. I'm sure they could do it more efficiently than the Dept. of Homeland Security.
Here's the long and the short of it. Instead of going after the real perps of the 9/11 attacks, BushCo has, in the name of "national security', invaded two countries at massive expense for the private commercial benefit of his clients, re-organized our government to assure minimum functionality and maximum corruption (witness New Orleans after Katrina. It's like, not there anymore.), and violated the civil rights of our citizens.
Yet the president declares that it is his job to provide security for the Amurican people and on his watch he will strike his best John Wayne pose to convince you that he is doing just that. He's already spent a half a trillion of your dollars to invade a couple of countries that posed as much threat to this nation as the tse-tse fly.
Why doesn't the president protect us from runaway health care and fuel costs and evaporating pensions and AIDS and global warming and the outsourcing of our livelihoods? Why doesn't he protect us from the thieves who run Washington and their corporate bosses? Oh yeah, he works for the same people.
The Poet's Eye sees that the only real war that BushCo is waging is the war on our freedoms and our pocketbooks.
"Naturally, the common people don't want war ... but after all it is the leaders of a country who determine the policy, and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is to tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in every country."
-- Hermann Goering
"History teaches that war begins when governments believe the price of aggression is cheap."
-- Ronald Reagan
