War on Peace: Now is No Time for Complacency
by Heather Wokusch
Dissident Voice
November 9, 2002
It started with
the November 2000 rigged US presidential election and has just degenerated from
there. I've not been alone in watching with horror as our country's government
flipped the bird at international treaties designed to protect human rights and
the environment, favoring military build-up and big oil instead. Many of us
have been outraged by the unelected ones sabotaging chances for an independent
investigation into 9/11, and disgusted by their ass-covering legal gyrations to
prevent inquiry into their former shady business dealings, not to mention their
equally shady bedding with oil interests once having seized political power.
But now it seems
the coup from hell is complete. In midterm US Congressional elections in which
only 40% of those citizens eligible bothered to vote, a full 95% percent of
House races and 75% of Senate races were won by the candidates who spent the
most money. This while, under the guise of "poll watching,"
Republican Party functionaries were posted at polling stations across the
country on Election Day, harassing (mainly Democratic) working class and
minority voters. This while, right before the voting, a beloved Democratic
Senator who was locked in a close election contest died in a mysterious plane
crash, exactly two years after another Democratic Senate candidate died in the
same mysterious way. This while the same inaccurate lists of supposedly ineligible
(mainly Democratic) voters which unfairly disenfranchised tens of thousands in
the 2000 presidential race, were inexplicably used again in this election. This
while much of the country voted via computer systems whose proprietary nature
does not permit public scrutiny, and which by definition do not leave much in
the way of physical evidence for each vote. The computer glitch in South
Florida which almost deleted 103,000 votes is a case in point; what other votes
could have been "lost" at the touch of a button, and to whose
benefit?
Do the math: in
a seriously flawed, arguably corrupt, electoral process in which the majority
of the population was too apathetic to even feign democratic pretenses, only
21% ended up granting Bush his newfound sweeping and absolute powers.
Call me
old-fashioned, but that's just not my idea of democracy. It's a farce and a
travesty. And it's guaranteed to get much worse.
With a lame-duck
Congress, and Republicans controlling both the House and the Senate (plus the Supreme
Court), it's clear military spending will skyrocket as domestic social services
are slashed and the environment is pillaged. Any previous attempts to rein in
corporate scandal and excess will be attacked as un-American (kiss the
corporate-fraud targeting Sarbanes-Oxley Act goodbye, for one). The proposed
$37 billion Department of Homeland Security bureaucracy will be approved, along
with its attending decimation of civil protection rights and collective
bargaining power. And with the Civil Disturbance Plan 55-2 (nicknamed GARDEN
PLOT) finally enforced, the military will be able to suppress domestic
"assemblages or rebellion against the authority of the United States"
whenever the President sees fit. In other words, it's going to get a lot more
dangerous to protest or express dissent.
And that's the
relatively good news.
As the US
economy tanks, Bush will pursue his oil-hegemony dreams in Iraq, creating a
bloodbath for both Iraqi civilians and US service members, not to mention
burning up hundreds of billions in taxpayer dollars in the process. Meanwhile,
the Putins and Sharons of the world will see fit to continue oppressing their
chosen targets, with full knowledge the US will turn a blind eye to their
crimes against humanity in return for their own tacit approval of similar US
actions. The Middle Eastern region will predictably destabilize, with dangerous
political/economic consequences accompanied by untold human costs.
And the US will
be subjected to further terrorist attacks - that is, if Secretary of Defense
Donald Rumsfeld has his way. According to a little-discussed classified
document prepared for Rumsfeld by the Defense Science Board, a group of private
industry executives advising the Pentagon, new counter-terrorism measures will
include "cover and deception" and secret military missions to
stimulate terrorists into making attacks, thereby leaving them open to
counterattacks by US forces. Plainly put, the so-called "Proactive,
Preemptive Operations Group (P2OG)" aims to save citizens from terrorist
attacks by actively provoking terrorist attacks against citizens. Got that?
It's no wonder
many normal people are feeling devastated and disillusioned right now, ready to
draw back from this whole damn dysfunctional mess.
But now is not
the time.
This train has
barely left the station and its destination can still be changed. The only
chance to alter the current sorry state of events and prevent matters from
getting much, much worse, is a vigilant and involved population. That's you and
me - actively assuming responsibility on a daily basis to name this societal rollback
for what it is, then confronting each step away from sanity, while presenting a
more humane and equitable alternative.
It's our only chance.
Heather
Wokusch is a free-lance writer with a background in
clinical psychology. Her work as been featured in publications and websites
internationally. Heather can be contacted via her website: http://www.heatherwokusch.com