The US Becomes Just Another Military Dictatorship

By: LewRockwell

Scott Lazarowitz writes: Within days after my article on due process and presumption of innocence, the U.S. Senate voted to empower the U.S. military to apprehend and detain indefinitely anyone in America, based on the whim of the soldier or military commander, and it will probably eventually include any armed agent of government including local police. As Jacob Hornberger noted, this new provision will codify the U.S. as just another one of many dictatorships throughout world history.

But, even though al Qaeda is virtually non-existent, the Washington imbeciles want to expand and extend the "War on Terror" anyway and include the entire U.S. territory as a "battlefield." How can we explain this? As Justin Raimondo speculated, the real reason for this new dictatorial power may be because these senators know that America is headed for economic collapse and civil unrest. But as I pointed out in my article on martial law, whether there are terrorists or not, or whether there is a prosperous or collapsing economy, all human beings have inalienable rights, among them the right to presumption of innocence and due process. Any government violations of those rights are crimes against the people, pure and simple.

Sen. Lindsey Graham commented that, "If you’re an American citizen and you betray your country, you’re not going to be given a lawyer," in his un-American opposition to due process and his approval of apprehending and detaining innocent civilians indefinitely. But, as I asked in my earlier article: Who will determine whether or not one has "betrayed one’s country"? Graham and the other pro-dictatorship government bureaucrats do not seem able to distinguish between someone who actually has acted (or been found guilty of acting) against one’s fellow Americans and someone who is accused of doing so. Graham wants to empower all military personnel (and probably any armed government official) to detain indefinitely those who are merely accused of doing something, without evidence brought forward, without having a lawyer, without access to their families, no due process whatsoever. This is a banana republic dictatorship, and it is thoroughly un-American, thoroughly anti-liberty.

Additionally, Graham hinted at curtailing political expression as protected by the First Amendment, and thus, given past examples of government censorship since 9/11, Americans who criticize the U.S. government’s "war on terror" could be declared as "enemy combatants," and apprehended and detained without charges or trial. If these senators have their way, merely questioning the government’s actions and questioning the legitimacy of these wars would be considered "terrorism."

Treason

While the senators are hinting at calling those who don’t support the government’s immoral wars as "treasonous," it really is they, the senators, who are acting treasonously. The senators are now turning the military against the American people. That is treasonous, according to the U.S. Constitution, as turning the military against the people would be the federal government’s "levying war" against the "United States," that is, the various states of the union, and thus against the people of the states. I have noted before that such treasonous acts have already occurred in America.

Questioning the Legitimacy of the "War on Terror"

Graham and other senators have said that, because "we’re at war," free speech shouldn’t include the right to criticize such wars or criticize the government’s actions. We shouldn’t be allowed to scrutinize the government’s actions or question the legitimacy of the "War on Terror."

But what if these wars have been entirely illegitimate? What if actual crimes have been committed by the military soldiers, generals, or bureaucrats? Should we just be obedient little sheep and sweep all that under the rug? What if the aggressions started by the U.S. government, in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, etc., and based on lies and propaganda, have been counter-productive, and resulted in making Americans less safe and less secure? What then? Free speech shouldn’t include the right to expose these things? We should declare as an "enemy combatant" someone who criticizes imbecilic and incompetent bureaucrats, arrest the critic and throw him into prison indefinitely, because the government bureaucrats don’t like their crimes and their idiocy exposed?

In regards to the irrational claim that the entire territory of the United States of America is a "battlefield," some people are worried about "homegrown" terrorists, those who are here in the U.S. who want to commit "jihad" against innocent Americans. But who motivates them? Our own FBI has been approaching young impressionable Muslim males who had no previous indications of terrorism and usually no prior criminal record, and intentionally motivating them with anti-American rhetoric, getting them emotionally worked up in the name of Islam, providing them with plans, materials, and helping them to set up their "homemade bombs," etc. to hurt others. In other words, these young Muslims would not have been involving themselves in all this had these FBI provocateurs not approached them in the first place.

Now, as I mentioned previously, in these cases the common sense method to reduce the terrorism threat would be for the FBI to approach these young Muslims and present them with ideas about peace and liberty, American principles, and encourage them to be peaceful and get along with their neighbors. But these are government bureaucrats we are talking about (i.e. lacking common sense). That is why these FBI agents’ actions have been contributors to making Americans’ lives more vulnerable and less safe. They are intentionally attempting to create new terrorists, which is just as dangerous as the drones that the incompetent CIA fires off from their computers, killing many more innocent civilians than terrorists in Pakistan and elsewhere. As Gen. Stanley McChrystal noted, for each innocent civilian you kill, you create ten new terrorists.

History

And for those who do not understand the assertion that the U.S. government has been provoking terrorist acts of retaliation, here is a brief summary of what the U.S. government and military did to the people of Iraq throughout the 1990s:

In 1991, during the Persian Gulf War, the war that President George H.W. Bush unnecessarily started against Iraq, the U.S. military intentionally destroyed civilian electrical, water and sewage treatment facilities. Air Force Col. John Warden wrote in 1995 that such an action was intentional, as a means to undermine "civilian morale." Warden wrote that the targeting and destruction of that civilian infrastructure was to "shut down water purification and sewage treatment plants" to result in "epidemics of gastroenteritis, cholera, and typhoid." The U.S. government-led U.N Sanctions on Iraq and Iraqi no-fly zones that followed throughout the 1990s prevented the Iraqis from rebuilding the civilian water and sewage treatment centers, causing them to use untreated water. This led to high rates of child mortality, cancer and other diseases, and the deaths of well over 500,000 innocent civilian Iraqis by the year 2000. It also led to widespread anti-American sentiment throughout the Middle East, and was cited by 9/11 terrorists as among their top motivations for their attacks.

Believe it or not, Ron Paul was one of the few people who predicted during the 1990s that the U.S. government’s murderous wars, sanctions and atrocities might lead to terrorists attacks within America’s shores. But because Paul is not an advocate of military socialism and central planning, many people have brushed him off as "eccentric," or "nutty."

How dare someone point out that when you commit acts of aggression against others, they may want to retaliate against you! How dare someone point out that when your government commits acts of aggression against foreigners, you are thus making your own fellow Americans less safe!

But senators want to say that critics of the central planners’ incompetence and criminality are "abetting" or "supporting" the terrorists. Those senators want to arrest the government’s critics who don’t bow in obedience, and not the criminals in the government who start wars and commit atrocities against foreigners and make their fellow Americans less safe.

Let’s go even further back in time for another example of the U.S. government’s provocations, in Iran, even before the U.S. government’s arming and abetting of Saddam Hussein’s gassing of innocent Iranians during the 1980s Iran-Iraq War:

In 1953, the CIA led a coup in Iran that overthrew the duly-elected leader Mossadegh and replaced him with the shah Mohammad Reza Pahlevi. This coup was mainly on behalf of the British and in the name of coveting Iran’s oil for the British. But the U.S. government supported the Shah’s dictatorial regime throughout the 1950, ‘60s and ‘70s, leading up to the Iranian Revolution and the Iranian Revolutionaries taking Americans hostage in 1979.

The Revolutionaries were responding to decades of the Shah’s brutality, supported by the U.S. government. According to this Federation of American Scientists article, the Shah’s ministry of security, SAVAK

expanded its activities to include gathering intelligence and neutralizing the regime's opponents. An elaborate system was created to monitor all facets of political life. For example, a censorship office was established to monitor journalists, literary figures, and academics throughout the country; it took appropriate measures against those who fell out of line. Universities, labor unions, and peasant organizations, among others, were all subjected to intense surveillance by SAVAK agents and paid informants. The agency was also active abroad, especially in monitoring Iranian students who publicly opposed Pahlavi rule…

Over the years, SAVAK became a law unto itself, having legal authority to arrest and detain suspected persons indefinitely. SAVAK operated its own prisons in Tehran (the Komiteh and Evin facilities) and, many suspected, throughout the country as well…

At the peak its influence under the Shah SAVAK had at least 13 full-time case officers running a network of informers and infiltration covering 30,000 Iranian students on United States college campuses. The head of the SAVAK agents in the United States operated under the cover of an attache at the Iranian Mission to the United Nations, with the FBI, CIA, and State Department fully aware of these activities.

Does it seem like our overzealous (and overpaid) U.S. senators are trying to model our government after the Iranian regime? They might as well, in their thoroughly un-American trashing of Americans’ liberty and rights to dissent and due process. The senators seem to want to be like communists in their love for as much expansion of government power and control they can get their hands on.

Now, how can anyone in his right mind not understand the motivations of Iranians to want to harm Americans in 1979, when the Iranians knew full well that the U.S. government was backing their brutal dictatorship? Even someone "with half his brain tied behind his back just to be fair" should understand this.

Conclusion

Our own government has been making us less safe and less secure, by poking hornets’ nests in its provoking foreigners, by engaging in gun-running ops to drug lords as well as attempting to disarm Americans, encouraging young Muslims to become jihadists against Americans, forcing Americans to go through radiation scanners that increase their risk of cancer, a never-ending list of central planning bureaucrats’ constantly posing a danger to us, certainly much more than Islamists. And now these un-American senators want to consider those who question the legitimacy of the illegitimate "War on Terror" as "enemy combatants," and do God-knows-what to us.

These dangerous senators should stop getting their ideas from Mein Kampf and the Communist Manifesto, and instead try reading the Declaration of Independence and the works of Thomas Paine and Murray Rothbard. No "war" is so important that they have to treat their fellow Americans like prisoners, and like doormats. This is all a result of the worst sickness to hit civilization: statism.

But eventually, I expect more people to realize that this tyranny is inevitable with centralization of power and central planning (a.k.a. "federalism"). You’re going to have to face the fact that central planning doesn’t work, and Leviathan is not "reformable." The road to this tyranny was paved long ago, especially with Honest Abe, Woodrow Wilson and FDR. The only way to save America is to decentralize it. The states must secede from Leviathan, and the people need to restore their freedom, independence and sovereignty.

If you know any soldiers or other military personnel, National Guardsmen, local police, mayors or governors, please send them my article on martial law, because they need to be reminded that they are legally and constitutionally obligated to disobey any unlawful orders by superiors, including by the President of the United States. Those individuals have sworn to obey and defend the U.S. Constitution (including the Bill of Rights!), and their state constitutions as well.

Scott Lazarowitz [send him mail] is a commentator and cartoonist at Reasonandjest.com.

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