Dissident Voice

June 7, 2003

Everywhere George W. Bush goes these days, there are three things tempering the thinking this time of his unelected presidency: terror, taxes, and trashing the tierra (and in that order).

Whether addressing the G8 summit in France, chatting up the Arab leaders in Egypt, or strutting around the deck of aircraft carriers off the coast of California, terror is the principal concern. "We have to be alert for terror". "We have to defeat terror". "We have to fund the fight on terror". Terror, terror, terror. One would think that America had a long history of dealing with foreign terror, but actually the only successful acts of foreign terror were done by men under Federal surveillance right up to the day of their actions, which were only accomplished by ignoring good intelligence and throttling down the standard procedures for hijacked aircraft.

Most Americans are not so concerned about domestic terror, such as Oklahoma City, Unabomber, Olympic Park, anti-abortion, and other domestic terror incidents, but terror committed by Americans against Americans has occurred far more often than terror against American civilians by foreigners.

Yet, Bush keeps talking terror as if he lives and dreams it. Could it be that Bush wants terror so he can keep funding anti-terror?

An interesting question came up after discovery that the defense of Baghdad was thwarted by financial arrangements between the CIA and the Bush administration with a high level Republican Guard general. For the right amount of cash, the general shut down the defense and the city of Baghdad was not defended. Is it possible that the CIA and the Bush Administration with all their links to the bin Laden family and Pakistani intelligence and all sorts of sordid figures might have somehow taken money to shut down the defense of New York City and Washington D.C. on September 11, 2001? We will never know without a full investigation of all the relevant links, and amazingly the President, the Congress and the public have showed no enthusiasm for such an investigation! But, everyone wants to talk terror!

Bush also likes to talk taxes, as in cutting them. Never mind that the best economists in the land warn that cutting taxes without cutting spending will exacerbate an already massive federal debt problem. Some have opined that Bush actually wants to create a severe financial crisis, so that he can find justification for drastic cutting back of social programs, including Social Service. A fiscal emergency might provide Bush the opportunity to do just that, and then, anyone who complained could be classified as unpatriotic terrorists, since the first priority has got to be the war on terrorism, right? And the federal debt is good for the wealthy beneficiaries of the tax cuts, who also are able to buy government bonds and thus enrich themselves at the expense of the lower caste citizenry. It has been reported that Bush's "brothers" in the old Yale Skull and Bones Society despise common citizens, calling them "eaters" and holding the view that the lower caste is dispensable.

If low caste people are dispensable, then the land itself surely is, from the Bush worldview. Trashing the tierra is a Bush mantra. "Every day is (exploit the) Earth Day", is the Bush paradigm. It is a crucial part of Bush domestic policy to remove endangered species protections, such as by defunding the listing process. Bush wants to make the process of designating "critical habitat" for endangered species solely discretionary, based on the opinions of his (anti-environmental) Secretary of the Interior, a person who considers James Watt her mentor. This is not just putting a fox in charge of the henhouse. This is about burning down the henhouse and telling the fire department that there is no fuel in the trucks and no water in the tanks to put out the fire.

In a way, it is all a form of terror -- against government of the people, by the people and for the people.

It is indeed a terrible time to be living for people of conscience in the United States of America. The terror is inflicted, not by Islamic extremists, but by neo-conservative zealots who push terror onto the national agenda so that the rich can fatten at the public trough and the rest of us can cower in fear. That is what it boils down to. Will the rest of us be content to cower in fear while the pigs get even fatter? There are signs that some good Americans have other ideas. Stay tuned ...

Stan Moore lives in San Geronimo, CA., and can be contacted at: hawkman11@hotmail.com