Mikaela says:
I can't shake Philip Roth's Plot Against America, especially with news pouring in like this from Democracy Now:
Secret Prisons, Renditions Enacted Under Broad CIA Program
The Washington Post is reporting new details of the covert CIA program enacted shortly after 9/11 by the Bush administration. The Post says the program, known by its initials GST, marks the largest CIA covert initiative since the height of the Cold War. It includes a range of controversial programs that have been recently uncovered or subjected to public scrutiny -- including the kidnapping of terror suspects abroad, the maintenance of secret prisons in at least eight foreign countries, the use of interrogation techniques considered illegal under international law, and the operation of a fleet of aircraft to move detainees around the globe.Powers authorized by President Bush include permitting the CIA to create paramilitary teams to hunt and kill designated individuals anywhere in the world. The Post reports the CIA is working to establish procedures that would allow for the quick cremation of a detainee’s body in the event the detainee dies in custody.
A government official who has been briefed on the program said: "Everything is done in the name of self-defense, so they can do anything because nothing is forbidden in the war powers act. It's an amazing legal justification that allows them to do anything."
and this:
National Security Agency Whistleblower Warns Domestic Spying Program Is Sign the U.S. is Decaying Into a “Police State”
Former NSA intelligence agent Russell Tice condemns reports that the Agency has been engaged in eavesdropping on U.S. citizens without court warrants. Tice has volunteered to testify before Congress about illegal black ops programs at the NSA. Tice said, “The freedom of the American people cannot be protected when our constitutional liberties are ignored and our nation has decayed into a police state."
What Philip Roth shows so well, with such eerie and scary prescience is just how easy it is to slip from freedom to fear. Such a small chasm. So dangerous. There's so little that fastens us to the "good side." There's so much that pulls the other way.
I can't tell you how many times I've heard the people of Gernmany denounced for staying silent during the horrors of WWII -- how could they let it happen?
Well, folks, look around. It happens just like this. It looks just like this. A steady decay under pretext of national safety. But Hitler invaded countries, you say? We're invading countries. Hitler wanted unbridled power in utmost secrecy? Have you heard our president lately? Hitler was a fascist? Fascism is nothing more than the marriage between government and corporations. Look around. The neocon agenda is the Nazi agenda with --- what did Rumsfeld call it? -- a slimmed-down military and less outright aryan justifying rhetoric.
I'm sure the historians will take offense and go to elaborate pains to prove how each little circumstance is substantially different. Fine. Hitler and Bush are not the same. But the danger is the same, if not worse. Hitler killed people in ovens. We've outsourced our killing to starvation and disease through hands-clean, capitalist methods.
But the overall point remains. History looks just like us, only we're more complacent and much more comfortable than I'm comfortable with.
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