Into the Valley of Catastrophe: Crusade of Surge and Siege, Part Four

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Read Part Three


Barbarians At the Gates


From the very beginning, the American crusade of surge and siege – with much of it predating the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq; think to early 20th century agreements with Saudi royalty of protection for petroleum, or the overthrow of Iran’s democratically elected nationalist leader, or CIA coups and installing of tyranny, or support for Saddam, or provocations of war, or fanning the flames of violence, or importation of billions worth of weapons – has been a catastrophe for the people of the Middle East. For years the United States has guided policy and fates in the region, with its unchallenged domination of and immoral support in the regimes of the Middle East causing a complete devolution of a dynamic, intelligent and proud amalgam of peoples, continuing a stagnation of a civilization that has given humanity so much, and which has so much yet to offer.

It has been the support of tyrants, dictators, generals, kings, princes and sheiks which has had the most profound effect in the lives of tens of millions of Arabs and Muslims, altering, perhaps indefinitely, the very foundations of a culture, and religion, that has for centuries been bombarded by the Judeo-Christian values of the western world. From Napoleon to Hitler, from the British Empire of old to the American Empire of today, from French domination of the Levant to the ceaseless criminality of Little Sparta in Palestine, the Middle East has been invaded, colonized, raped, pillaged, oppressed and exploited by western powers for decades.

It has been divided and torn apart according to the desires of colonial powers; it has been invaded countless times by Christian Crusaders seeking some combination of god and glory, power and control, hegemony and imperialism. Throughout European, and later American, interventions in the region, countless numbers of Arabs and Muslims suffered and died. It has been the west, and not the peoples of the Middle East, that have for centuries been the aggressors, the barbarians at the gates of Muslim cities, those doing the invading and occupying, those raping and pillaging, those with the messianic delusion to convert and civilize and control the Arab world.

It has been the west that thinks itself the superior race, thinking Middle Easterners inferior, sub-human heathens. It has been the west that ignores the plight of the dehumanized and the oppressed, all the while enjoying the spoils of plunder, over time becoming morbidly obese with the gluttony and greed cheap oil engenders.

The people of the Middle East were not, after all, the ones responsible for the Napoleonic Wars, nor the creators of two World Wars, nor the destroyers of entire cities, nor the barbarians giving rise to Holocausts, or thousand year old persecutions, nor the ones responsible for the death of tens of millions of human beings during the 20th century. The people of the Middle East were not planting puppet regimes throughout Europe and the Americas, nor were they wishing to convert, civilize and control the western world. They are not the ones in pursuit of imperialism and hegemony.

They were not bombing and killing and seeking vengeance outside their region until after the Second World War, after America, with help from her allies, decided the Middle East was to become part of its sphere of influence. Indeed, for centuries living in peace and respect, in the same lands, cities and neighborhoods, Arabs of Muslim, Christian and Jewish faith have long maintained a balance of tolerance between Muslim majority and Jewish, Christian minorities that has only been disrupted with the arrival, and the manipulations and gross injustice, of the western colonial powers.

For decades preferring to control the region by proxy, in a clandestine manipulation of populations and territory, the United States has become a catastrophe upon the peoples of the Middle East. Its vast assortment of puppets and castrated proctors have proceeded to decimate the lives and futures of millions, over the years maintaining a firm grip over nations through the devastation of freedoms and liberties and rights, along with the implementation of authoritarian and despotic policies. Unwavering in its support of these tyrants, America has condemned millions to the brutality of dictatorships, to the censorship by despots, to the corruption of incompetents, to the regressive policies of control, to the backwardness of monarchs.


Sponsoring Tyranny


Possessing the largest, most plentiful and best developed oil fields known to man, one would be inclined to believe the Middle East a bastion of equality and justice, with standards of living equal to or surpassing those of the industrialized world. We would expect a thriving democracy pregnant with the freedoms and liberties inherent in wealthy nations. We would also expect, as we do with rich European and American nations, that the countries of the Middle East would possess a high degree of education among its population, allowing for rule of law and foundations of secularism to prevail. We would expect a thriving middle class, with employment at levels supportive of such dynamics. We would expect peace and balance.

Instead, in the land of black gold there exists not a shred of democracy, nor an ounce of freedom and liberties, nor an appearance by redistribution of oil wealth. In the lands where humankind first developed civilization, Machiavellian authoritarians rule, police states flourish, and backwardness prevails. Here, where a few elite are reaping the bountiful rewards of having oil below their feet, or having the lands deemed strategic to the Empire, accumulating millions and billions of dollars in profit, building majestic palaces and living the lives of gods, the vast majority struggle to survive and make a decent living. Here, in the land of kingdoms and fiefdoms and gold-plated palaces, the majority of Arabs and Muslims live in indigence, finding work only as the serfs enabling their Arab lords to live in luxury. Millions manage to survive only because their masters throw a few insignificant crumbs and bones their way, a minute sum of the enormous oil and gas windfall they greedily ensnare for themselves.

While millions subsist on meager jobs, millions more struggle to find meaningful employment. Unemployment in the region is therefore high, with military-age males the hardest hit. Without employment there is no source of income to survive; there is no morale to feel proud of; there is no sign of opportunity, no sign of a future. With an education that is insignificant, for that is how kings and dictators want it, millions have no option but to become easy targets to the propaganda and the manipulations of their lords.

Indeed, in order to better control the population, education has become a tool of indoctrination, with millions of dollars invested by the elite into religious institutions that brainwash and mold vulnerable minds to the fantasy of theology and the backwardness of extremist ideology. Subsidized and sponsored by the same kings and tyrants, these schools, rather than move society forward towards progressive goals, instead succeed in devolving into backwardness and fundamentalism. Many Muslims simply have no choice but to attend these schools, for oftentimes they are the only schools around, in the process helping indigent families cope with the realities of daily life.

So long as ignorance prevails, and as long as knowledge and leanings of modernity are sequestered and mired in the inescapable grip of poverty, the Middle East’s despotic leaders will remain secure and without fear of their own people. So long as their people are not educated to the methodical condemnation of their lives by kings and despots, leaders will reign, sitting on the thrones of gold, feasting on the spoils thrown at them by the Empire. This reality the Empire tolerates and even encourages, for a controlled, undereducated and powerless people are more likely to remain compliant and passive than those who see with open eyes the pillage of their land and the injustice of their leaders.

Unfortunately, this phenomenon of fundamentalist religious indoctrination, together with lack of education and feelings of injustice, oppression and inequality lends itself to the fomentation of extremism, just as it does in any culture, especially a form of extremism which lashes out both at domestic despotism and foreign control and support of that same despotic rule. Using fundamentalist theology to manipulate desperate minds experiencing desolate, unfulfilled lives, radical men of Islamic faith reach out to the many whose lives have been castrated by leaders supported by the Empire.

Radicalism in the Middle East, born of frustration, oppression and lack of opportunity, growing due to inequality, unfairness, injustice and persecution, nurtured by a corrupted and hijacked interpretation of modern Islamic faith, and manifesting itself through violent acts of terrorism, is a symptom of the disease called market colonialism, of an imperialism that cares nothing for people living in misery and perpetual suffering, where the west props up and supports and finances its cadre of despots and tyrants in the region, with their full array of crimes against humanity being protected by the Empire itself, at the expense of the native populations, in order to control the region’s, and the world’s, most valuable resource. Turning to Islamic extremism, then, is a symptom of anger, of hopelessness, of the presence of the Empire itself.

Islamic fanaticism, like its American, and Christian counterpart, thrives on the disenfranchised, the downtrodden, the ignorant, and in those searching for meaning to lives heavy in suffering and pain. Like all forms of fanaticism, the Islamic variety grows and thrives by listening to the angry and the oppressed, providing answers and solutions that help maintain a semblance of understanding in a cruel world. It is those who have become easily manipulated and easily deceived that fanaticism aims to reach, for in these lost souls new, molded flames can be lit.

Thus, by combining the fanaticism all theologies possess with the living, walking carcasses left behind by America’s propped up tyrants and kings, gorging on the spoils of oil, too greedy to share with their people, together with American interference in the region, a grassroots resistance is birthed that finds solace and solutions in the beliefs of the past, thinking, rightly, that the devastation of their lives is a result of modernity –albeit a debased form of it – and its corruption by authoritarians sponsored by the west.

Deceived by extremism to hate all things western, because the root of their ills is indeed a product of the western world, they fail to see the reality that true fault lies not in western progressiveness, which is humanitarian, communal and universal in nature, but in the despotic character and oppressive policies of leaders that will not free their subjects to the great virtues of real democracy.

Here, America and her puppet allies in the region have made a vital and egregious error, for in inducing high levels of indigence, uneducation and dissatisfaction, in allowing despotism to rule and the voice of the people to disappear, thereby creating a Molotov cocktail of anger and resentment aimed at the Empire and Arab leaders, they have fostered instability and resistance, some in the form of anti-Americanism, some in the form of terrorism, most in the form of a society that grows more eager for change every year. Together with a perception that America has embarked on a Crusade of Surge and Siege against the Muslim world, and that her armies are engaging in mass murder and destruction of Muslim peoples, the only avenue for change is being found inside the mosques of radical ideology.


Error Personified


Instead of giving Middle East populations a larger share of the oil bonanza pie; instead of decreasing the verticality of the hierarchical pyramid, thus making society more just, fair and equal, with better standards of living, better education and more progressiveness; instead of allowing the Empire a just, balanced and reduced access and control to oil; instead of banning the pillage of revenues and resources, where capital benefits only the elite; instead of investing in enlightened education, helping to bring out of darkness millions of minds; instead of using oil revenues and investing in the wellbeing of their people; instead of halting billion dollar purchases in the west’s defense industry, amassing arms for wars that will never come, using weapons sales to funnel petro dollars back to the Empire; instead of alleviating hardship, resentment and anger; instead of sponsoring freedom and liberty and greater rights; instead of abiding by and protecting human rights; instead of encouraging an open, democratic society, the American amalgam of dictators, tyrants, kings, princes, sheiks and generals have done the complete opposite, thereby cementing in stone continued resistance, continued acts of terror, continued anti-Americanism and continued efforts to violently overthrow the region’s rulers.

In order to suppress, repress and control those elements seeking to bring down the region’s tyrannical regimes, the leaders of these states have created a ruthless police state based on oppression, fear, intimidation and paranoia. To combat the anger prevalent in the population, America’s puppets must enhance a surveillance and spying society, creating a police state that has perfected the art of despotic rule. Torture, disappearances, the evisceration of human rights, unlawful arrests, persecution and false imprisonment are but some of the weapons used by these rulers. Yet the Empire maintains firm support of these leaders, a fact not lost on the population at large.

Right to assembly, right to free speech, freedom of the press, the right of habeas corpus, the right to a fair trial, the right of due process and of protections against unreasonable search and seizure are freedoms not afforded to the peoples of the Middle East. These are freedoms and rights America does not care to ask or demand of its puppets. Free elections and the will of the people are but hollow dreams that cannot be given to the masses, for if allowed to vote, tyrants and kings and dictators and generals would be thrown out. To the Empire, democracy is only democracy when the people elect America’s chosen leaders, her new puppet upgrade. If the masses elect someone other than America’s champion, democracy becomes null and void, the will of the people become obsolete and collective punishment becomes policy, and state-sponsored terror. To the Empire, democracy is valid only when fraud or theft returns to power her most loyal and obedient proctors.

The people of the Middle East do not hate the Empire for its freedom and liberties, nor for its way of life. On the contrary, they would love the same freedoms and liberties, the same respect for human rights, and perhaps a better standard of living than they presently enjoy. They hate the Empire for its transgressions in the region, for its continued support for tyranny, for its hypocrisy in talking democracy and systemically supporting despotism, for its rape and pillage of both land and people, for its addiction to oil that has brought nothing but ruin to the people of the region, for its one-sided support for Israel and its apartheid and state-sponsored terrorism in Palestine, for its genocide and destruction of Iraq and its people, for promising Afghan reconstruction but only succeeding in furthering a decline to a failed state, for its quite obvious indifference to the misery and suffering of Arab and Muslim peoples, for its continued Crusade of Surge and Siege that only threatens to engulf the region in flames and further decimate the lives of millions.

Democracy and freedom cannot prosper in these conditions, for despotic rule and free societies are mutually exclusive. In fact, the populations of these nations have very few, if any, freedoms and rights to speak of, and millions are handcuffed to the heavy handed rules and regulations of the state, many of which resemble those of the Middle Ages. When democracy is spoken of, it represents illusions and mirages, not the will of the people, but the charades of the elite. In the Middle East, democracy is a whispered demand, yet an unfulfilled reality. It remains a dream of millions, and an enemy of the few. In the Middle East of reality, and not that of American fiction, tyranny dominates and democracy is nonexistent and all the while, American hypocrisy festers in the mind of the disillusioned.

Of course the United States is fully aware of the methods used by its tyrants to control the population, yet the support, whether diplomatic, financial and militarily, is as constant as it is unwavering. This tacit support of tyranny by the Empire, even when it speaks of bringing freedom and democracy, speaks of the high level of hypocrisy and duplicity inherent in the Empire. That American sponsored tyranny has catapulted the region into backwardness, that it has furthered the evolution of fanaticism, that it has given rise to resistance and terror, that it has made impotent the infinitesimal attempts at building democracy, and that it has created decades of suffering, poverty, oppression and lost opportunity can only be denied, as it usually is, inside the Empire itself. Inside the fires of imperialism, that is to say inside the Middle East, this truth is well known, and understood.

That human beings resent despotism and tyranny is a self-evident truth; that they build resistance and resentment to colonial machinations and imperialist assaults on their lives is earthly reality. That most human beings want simply the opportunity to pursue life, liberty and happiness without barriers or hindrances or the control of the state is an absolute manifestation of who we are. To be human – and yes, the people of the Middle East are, in fact, human – is to seek and want justice, fairness, equality and fundamental human rights. It is to fight oppression and stand for dignity and honor.

What we abhor as a species are illegal, aggressive invasions and brutal occupations of innocent states, exploitations and repression of the individual and criminality and mass murder that is allowed to transpire and go unaccountable. What the people of the Middle East want is exactly what the western world already has. What they want is freedom from imperialism, freedom from tyranny, freedom to exploit their own resources, for their own benefit, for their present and future generations. What they seek is a chance to be human at the dawn of the 21st century.

What they ask is that they be seen the same as any other person in this planet, possessing the same emotions, fears and opinions, the same behaviors and desires. What they seek is the empathy and understanding for the lives they must endure, the tyranny they must live under and the Crusade of Surge and Siege the Empire has imposed on them.

So close your eyes, contemplate reality and not spoon-fed fantasy, envision and empathize, try to understand alien pain and suffering, put yourself in the shoes of the millions being strangulated by the Empire, and prepare to enter the fires of imperialism.

Crusade of Surge and Siege: Part Two: Cages of Conquest

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Hear No Evil, See No Evil


Americans’ ever-enduring, catatonic sleepwalk through the Empire’s vast array of bread and circus, as always produced by the Ministry of Truth and the Department of Propaganda, better known as the corporatist media, has succeeded in the creation of an ignorant, incurious and dumbed down populace completely bereft of knowledge of what is done in its name. With no concern for or understanding of geography, cultures, history, alien societies, the outside world and of the imperial aspirations of the Empire, Americans have proved easy targets to the manipulations and deceptions of the corporatist world. Seemingly unwilling to gain knowledge of anything outside American Idol or the weekly NASCAR rat race, the soldier ants and worker bees of the Empire are content to circumvent the horrors of war and the myriad crimes against humanity committed in their name in order to maintain their beautiful minds at peace.

Indeed, the corporatist media has triumphed in completely erasing America’s two disastrous occupations of Muslim lands from the peoples’ conscious and concern, in effect shifting the ongoing debacles away from the daily reality of Americans and towards the abyss of a most cavernous memory hole. Methodically and systematically, the quagmires of Iraq and Afghanistan, with all their inconvenient truths, with all their disturbing realities, with all their corresponding death, suffering and destruction, have virtually vanished into a vacuum of nothingness, transported by the corporatist state into a clandestine and secretive reality, making of these disasters non-existent nightmares that vanish upon the waking of a new day.

This propaganda by omission, this “out of sight, out of mind” machination has virtually erased from American reality the disasters unfolding in Iraq and Afghanistan, thus guaranteeing in the public mind a complete ignorance in or understanding of a barbaric continuation to occupations stuck in the quicksand of fierce resistance and never-ending guerilla warfare. Thus, America’s aggressive wars, its imperial occupations, its crusade of surge and siege that has done so much harm to millions of people, not to mention to the moral standing of the nation, have become non-existent memories under cover of fog and haze.

To the American people, the hegemonic occupations now descending further into quagmire have become invisible creations that only surface in the rare instance that a branch of the corporate media goes off script and produces footage of death, destruction or suffering. Otherwise, the war against West Asia remains a figment of our imagination, a reality when our beautiful minds want it to be, an inconvenient truth that becomes fiction the moment we decide it is so.

As such, having been conditioned through the corporatist media’s ceaseless dehumanization propaganda to believe Arabs and Muslims sub-human enemies, having been manipulated into hating America’s new enemy and having the corporatist media erase Iraq and Afghanistan from the memory hole, the American people have developed a disturbing, almost criminal indifference for the millions of human beings dying, suffering or otherwise being affected by the Empire’s wars and occupations. To a vast majority of Americans, the malignant tumors that are Guantanamo, Bagram and Abu Ghraib, together with what they represent, are as hazy and as far removed from reality as last week’s episode of a favorite sitcom. These cesspools of immorality rarely, if ever, register in the beautiful minds of most Americans, only bothering the conscious when photos, video or whistleblowers surface to incriminate torturers, leaders and patsies. Only then are we forced to confront one of the myriad number of inconvenient truths the red, white and blue does across the globe.

When truth does not surface, however, we revert back to willful ignorance, aided by the fictions of television and the comfort of consumerism, for deep down, inside the dark recesses of our mind, we know exactly what is done in our name, though we chose, willfully, to erase it from memory, to suppress the reality of American criminality. Using denial and delusion in conjunction with conditioned brainwashing and manipulation, we have decided that crimes against humanity do not exist if those crimes are done to sub-human enemies. Thus the barbarian horde at our gates becomes undeserving of human rights and international laws protecting human beings because they do not fit our definition of human.

Thus, never do we seek to know the ugly realities of places like Guantanamo, nor how America’s gulags, with their brutal methods and tactics, will inevitably affect our way of life, or question why they exist in the first place. For us, America’s black sites are reserved for the evildoers wanting to destroy our way of life. Little do we realize, though, that our way of life is being eroded at these very same sites, one right at a time, done not by terrorists, but by those managing our descent into the breadbasket of despotism. Remaining passive, obedient, silently acquiescent and possessing the attention span of a gnat, hundreds of millions of Americans thus concern themselves only with what new toy they can add to the family collection, or what new product they can obediently purchase next, or what new reality show will entertain them the most. After all, we must preserve our “way of life”.

If Guantanamo and what it stands for does not directly affect us, if torture and perpetual suffering and dehumanizing conditions and sadistic treatment and the destruction of habeas corpus and the Bill of Rights only affects the dreaded dark skinned Arab or Muslim, then America’s beautiful minds need not concern themselves or have empathy, they need not contemplate the inflictions of wickedness on their fellow human beings, they need not realize the crimes done in their name, nor the evisceration of American morality, nor the new normal being established, nor the precedence beings set, nor the trial and error being conducted, nor the techniques being experimented and refined, nor the machinations of tyranny being perfected.

Thus, through our transcendental customs, our American “way of life,” of methodically following the exploits of celebrities dead or dying, of aimlessly producing and consuming, as always becoming hypnotized by modern day court jesters, jousters, gladiators and chariot races, as well as exhibiting idol-worshipping, messianic-like followings and tendencies over the Corporatist Party’s current crop of presidential contenders, we have chosen to ignore the plight of the innocent – for most prisoners are – in Guantanamo and Bagram and Abu Ghraib and other places of ill-repute. We have thus chosen to be good Americans, seeing no evil, hearing no evil, mistaking ashes for snow, and pretending the evil done in our name does not exist.


Reincarnation of the Habitual


To look inside one of America’s gulags is to look back at dark history, to times of brutality and primitiveness, using the tunnel of hindsight to peer at the dungeons of the Roman Empire and of the Middle Ages, with their chained and caged collections of dissidents, enemies and scapegoats, their persecuted and tortured, and their sadism and thirst for blood; it is to step back in time to days of Inquisitions and torture chambers, to eras of witch persecutions and heretic trials, of silencing threats to power and spawning a black cloud of fear and intimidation throughout society.

It is a return to days when humans had no right, to nights of barbarism, to the depravity and indecency of our mammalian past, to the possession of the human mind by the wicked demons inherent in man. Looking inside America’s gulags helps us remember that over and over, for as long as humankind has walked the plains of Earth, when authoritarians rise, as always carried high on the shoulders of fear and insecurity, morality, integrity and human rights become lost in a sea of tyranny. These institutions of immorality help us see beyond the veneer and the hypocrisy that those espousing freedom and liberty propagate, helping erase the fog of deception those claiming to be defenders of human rights engender.

America’s archipelago of gulags proves, once again, that the “western” mantra of values, modernity and morality is nothing but an empty shell built on self-adulation, delusion and echoes of ethnocentrism and exceptionalism. This hollow and cynical vociferation falls flat upon the challenge of evolving human rights, for in its claim of moral superiority, hiding behind the theoretical wonders of Judeo-Christian tradition, supposedly progressing away from the primitiveness of our past, the “western” tradition has been one of continuous mass murder, repression, tyranny, oppression, exploitation, suffering and destruction, most aimed directly at the peoples of the “south,” most directed at people not possessing the genetic mutation that turned skin color pale.

American gulags and its system of extraordinary renditions, green lighted at the very top of the food chain, proves to anyone not blinded by delusions and propaganda that America is not now and has never been morally superior to the rest of the world. From the very beginning of the republic, morality has given way to imperialism. Whether done through proxy, by puppets or by America’s own hands, control over the peoples of the world has usually involved some form of tyranny, as always dependent on the vast funding, financing, political support and training of the Empire. However, where once hidden under the veneer of democracy and freedom, under the ruthlessness of puppet dictators, America’s sordid, though clandestine, past has come to the surface thanks to the exposure of its methods and techniques, becoming an open acknowledgement of past indiscretions and present malfeasance.

From the School of the Americas, to research into psychological and physical torture at McGill University, to perfecting the art of “enhanced interrogation techniques,” to support of every tin pot dictator and junta in Latin America, Asia, the Middle East and Africa, to the training of their thugs, enforcers and torturers, America has always possessed the wickedness of human malevolence. Its claims of being the defender of human rights is and has always been hypocritical at best and farcical at worst. Today we can see the real America at Guantanamo and its extension of gulags and torture chambers, the America the world entire has known for the last century but that Americans are just now waking up to. For today’s gulags are evolved creations of yesterday’s criminality, just as they will be the inspirations for tomorrow’s tyranny.


Entrapment


Guantanamo, with its cages and sensory deprivation and barking dogs and dehumanization and its stress positions and forced feeding and extremes of cold and hot and its isolation and its medical/psychological experimentation and its waterboarding and its darker, more sinister methods of torture yet to be exposed magnifies American tyranny and her hypocrisy, her injustice and depravity, her criminality and arrogance. It exposes, more and more, the charade that the war on terror is, how the purpose of Guantanamo is not the imprisoning of terrorists, for most there are guilty only of bad luck, persecution, retribution and being at the wrong place at the wrong time, but the methodical evisceration of the Constitution.

For Guantanamo, and its siblings, are a culmination of desperation, an attempt to rationalize the supposed existence of Arab and Muslim evil, an attempt to validate a fictional war on terror by incarcerating people falsely labeled “terrorists.” It is as much a torture center as it is a public relations and propaganda institution, a way to manipulate the American public both that Arab and Muslim terrorists exist, and that the American government is succeeding in bringing the terrorist threat to justice. It is a Hollywood-style set with its corresponding fictions and illusions of reality, a scam to convince Americans that a war that is concocted is indeed real, that it is being won.

The reality of the gulags exposes how an initial hunger for vengeance immediately after 9/11 has led to the imprisonment, suffering and torture of thousands, and how, knowing the falsity of charges and the innocence of men, America steadfastly continues shackling injustice, deciding to stage-manage the illusion of guilt as well as sacrifice the innocent to the continued myth of the so-called war on terror.

Kidnapped, traded in for money, picked up by a giant net of vengeance and imprisoned thanks to false accusations by rivals, the men at Guantanamo have become patsies in a world unconcerned for their rights. They are caged in a land of limbo, lost to the outside world, made to disappear, their lives practically an empty shell of their former selves . They are the scapegoats of American mendacity, labeled “terrorists” so that we can feel secure and protected, so that we can believe that evildoers hate us for our freedom, for our way of life. They are the poster children that grant the military-industrial complex a perpetual stream of blood money, a ceaseless parade of war, an endless flow of propaganda. They are, quite simply, the bread that gives authoritarianism sustenance, the wine that makes drunk with joy the enablers of fascism. They are, for all intents and purposes, dead men walking, ghosts without closure, phantoms forgotten by humanity.

Innocent of criminality, these individuals have been subjected to brutal and sadistic torture, as always leading to false confessions, their barbaric imprisonment and systemic dehumanization more a manifestation of American culture than of their resistance and human spirit. Many have been physically tortured, yet it is the more corrosive damage of psychological torture that has destroyed their minds, and their lives. Many will never return to normalcy, for what their minds have surely been subjected to no human brain should have to endure. Many have become the guinea pigs of psychologists and doctors experimenting with various methods of torture, trying to make torture more effective, more efficient.

Many have quietly, and conveniently, under cover of darkness or media blackout, been returned to their native countries, their innocence confirmed by their release, and by the silence of America. Forced to sign papers preventing them from speaking of their horrors, or from suing their torturers, they return a shell of their former selves, damaged beyond repair, scarred for life, forever to relive the horror they experienced in their nightmares and flashbacks. Yet many remain, shackled to American propaganda, held hostage to the illusions of the war on terror. As long as the fiction lives their guilt is assured, their imprisonment guaranteed. As long as tyrants fear persecution and imprisonment for criminality, they will live in cages. As long as they are used as the meat feeding the dogs of tyranny, they will remain encaged. As long as the authoritarian leadership seeks the continued erosion of the Constitution, and of our rights and freedoms, they will linger in perpetual purgatory, becoming the rotting carcass fed to the vultures of fascism.

Guantanamo’s cages cannot yet be opened and made empty, for to do so would be to expose the fictions, the charades, the method to the madness, the sheer immorality of the Empire. It would be to acknowledge injustice of innocence, the depravity of liberators, the criminality of leadership. Guantanamo’s gates cannot yet be closed, for the Crusade of Surge and Siege must continue, the enemy must exist, profits must remain, our rights and freedoms and liberties must be destroyed. New precedents of American legality must be established, kangaroo courts must convict, enemies must be punished, propaganda must manipulate and the innocent must be executed in order to increase leadership popularity, to refresh propaganda, to feed fear and to politicize elections.

America’s leadership is fully aware of the innocence of the vast majority of prisoners, yet cannot force itself to act against its own inhumanity. For to do so would be to admit mistakes, acknowledge criminality, condemn policies and destroy the authoritarian dream. Closing Guantanamo would expose the façade, the hall of smoke and mirrors, ending the subtleties of fear and intimidation being built around the American public. Perhaps more than anything, freeing the innocent and closing America’s torture centers would confirm the monstrosity of what America has become, destroying the foundations of a new normal being developed, maybe even shattering the bubble of manipulation cast over the population.

As long as Guantanamo remains the motives of fascists will survive, and the indifference of the American people will be assured. As long as its cages are occupied, as long as its torture rooms resonate with the screams of agony and suffering, Guantanamo will be the symbol of a new Amerika, one at war with the Arab and Muslim world, an Amerika at war with its people, and itself. As long as it remains a stain on humanity, America’s clandestine past and her immediate present will be exposed to more and more people, thereby freeing truth and knowledge, liberating the brainwashed and emancipating the manipulated.

Inside America’s gulags the future of the nation is being determined, one malevolent policy at a time, one sadistic interrogator at a time, one tortured soul at a time. It is here where our way of life is being altered, perhaps forever, not by terrorist evildoers hating us for our freedoms, but by fascism’s enablers doing the work of those domestic evildoers that hate us for our freedoms, for our way of life. In this Crusade of Surge and Siege, the Arab and Muslim victims have become a bridge of precedence set and normalcy born reaching out towards America, becoming the scapegoats and patsies granting access, and an omnipresent reach, to tyranny rising over that city on a hill once known as the United States of America.


Part Three: Inside the Fires of Imperialism, to be posted 25 February, 2008

The Year of Living Dangerously: Part One of Two

Read Part Two


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Manifestations of Intent


Can you smell the smoked fumes of a discombobulated economic engine that has ceased to function, its synergy spitting and sputtering, its many parts thrashed by the claws, and vices, of neoliberal capitalism? Can you feel the dismantling of the economic spark plug, the American consumer, as our livelihoods are sacrificed to the greed, and incompetence, of the establishment and as the value of our lives is further enslaved to the Almighty Dollar and its puppet masters?

Can you hear the roar of authoritarian Machiavelli-types, of which many exist, cheering as the Constitution is discarded like yesterday’s trash, its principles and foundations burned inside the incinerator of fascism? Can you hear the searing of one of the greatest documents of governance ever created by man as it goes up in flames thanks to the kerosene thrown at it by American corporatists in power, its ashes slowly scattering into the realm of nothingness?

Can you see, if not blinded by tele-trash and infotainment, by the propaganda we call news, by the lies and deceit and censorship of the corporate media, by the comforting glow of television, by the charade that is American democracy and by the myriad distractions of bread and circus, the approaching finality of American liberty and freedom, soon to be replaced by Big Brother, a surveillance society, a police state and full-fledged corporatism?

Can you sense the growing momentum of militarism and imperialism rampaging across the nation, and the globe, leaving nothing but hatred and animosity in its wake? Can you sense that imperialism and empire abroad and freedom and democracy at home are mutually exclusive, that to attain the former the latter must be sacrificed, and that inevitably the people must, for imperialism to function, be immersed in tyranny? Do you realize that we are one major shock, one major event away from catapulting our lives into the headwaters of an altogether different America?

If you are not angered, indeed enraged, by the current state of the United States, then you have not been paying attention, or you just do not care enough about the future your children will inherit, and have to live in. If you are not alarmed at where, at present, this course is invariably taking us, then you have abandoned the responsibilities of an informed citizen, preferring the comfortable warmth of ignorance to the absolute frigidity of a most ominous reality.

Indeed, it has been our passivity and acquiescence, bred of comfort, distraction and the erosion of critical thinking, that has facilitated our decent into authoritarian and corporatist waters. It has been our indifference and our “can’t happen here” mentality that is inevitably guaranteeing that it does, in fact, “happen here.” It is our inexperience with tyranny at home and our lack of exposure to authoritarian tendencies such as surveillance, secret police, torture, spying and disappearances, prevalent in many American supported states, encouraged by our government, though until recently non-existent here, that subjects us to a methodical assault by Machiavellian ideologies.

What billions of humans have first-hand experience in, oftentimes thanks to our government’s sponsorship, funding, training, backing, protection and encouragement, we have not yet fully been subjected to. The dirty little secret that the people outside our borders understand fully, and which has been kept from us, is the principle that if America wishes to maintain its empire, it must then continue acting like an empire. This, of course, means maintaining a firm grip over its vassal states, by proxy through its puppets, using the methods any aspiring empire must use, namely tyranny, oppression, and repression along with the tools at the disposal of any credentialed authoritarian.

As the empire expands and seeks more control over lands, resources and people, its methods become more and more brutal, as native peoples become more resistant, with growing imperialism and addiction to hegemony needing greater amounts of military weaponry, violence and tyranny to squash and threaten resistance movements. In order to maintain its overstretched empire, America must therefore become openly fascist, a reality that cannot be fused with the freedoms, rights, liberties and democracy of its own people. The two principles, empire and liberty, are diametrically opposed, incompatible elements in a struggle to determine the future course of the nation.

Given that historically the nation’s elite and its establishment have consistently chosen imperialism, expansion and empire building, there is no reason to believe that this hegemonic drive will decelerate. On the contrary, in a world of finite resources, eager and growing competitors, a globe that only seems to get smaller, with an ever-increasing population and with Washington enraptured in arrogance, self- aggrandizement, self-exceptionalism and greed, it is certain that the elite will invariably chose to sacrifice the Constitution, and the foundations of American society, and hence the freedoms, rights and liberties of the masses, in order to maintain and expand the realm of American hegemony. This paradigm is occurring today, in real time. The transformation is under way, right before our eyes.

For between the coup that was the 2000 general election, allowing entry into the executive branch of corporatists and authoritarians, and the first hours of the American Reichstag, or 9/11, that most catalyzing and transformative of events, the neocon Pearl Harbor, America, already a most vicious and evil empire in the decades before then, seemingly elevated its level of arrogance, unilateralism, defiance, wickedness, inhumanity and violence against the people of the world.

Whereas the 2000 stolen election introduced an era of open hostility, unilateralism and a “we will do what we want” mentality regarding the United States’ view toward world relations, including the planning and green lighting of the attacks, invasions and occupations of Afghanistan, Iraq and other Middle East nations, 9/11 was the shock introducing the world to an America intent on global hegemony, now open and transparent, the new normal, the maker of humanity’s new reality. The inside job of 9/11, aimed as a psychological attack on the American people, designed so the masses would become subservient and acquiescent to otherwise unpopular methods of empire building, also allowed the Pax Americana to begin its quest for hegemony on a more transparent, and thus easier, basis.

Before 9/11, as has been described above, America’s elite were forced to rely on mostly clandestine methods of hegemonic expansion, as well as to at least give the impression of following and adhering to international law, its activities kept secret from its population only to maintain control on the home front, given the unpopularity of tyranny and all its tools. This made it much harder for the empire to achieve its goals. With the end of the Cold War, with its threat of an external bogeyman gone, which was used as an excuse to justify America’s imperial aspirations, supposedly to defend freedom and democracy, new excuses had to be concocted, new enemies had to be created that would engender in the population acceptance towards a continuation of Manifest Destiny.

Hence, new methods of manipulation, such as 9/11, were implemented. The opportunity that was 9/11, a catalyzing and transformative event, allowed American fascists to continue their previous drive forward, only this time in a more open, methodical way, with the full engines of American societal and military might fully behind the endeavor to conquer the strategic lands, resources and peoples of the world in favor of American corporations, particularly the military-industrial-energy complex, and its elite. Today, much more than in the past, the criminality and control is done in full and open arrogance, not caring that the world becomes witness to an imperialism that is as systemic as it tyrannical.

9/11, for all its terror and fear inducing stupor, guaranteed compliance, passivity and even ignorant encouragement on the part of the American people. After all, an external, dark-skinned, unknown bogeyman had dared to attack the empire. It was only natural, then, that the empire fight back, even if those lands of the bogeyman were conveniently also those that had been preemptively chosen months and years before for invasion and attack due to the strategic locations and natural resources claimed by the empire itself. Under this rubric, along with the frivolous claim of bringing “freedom and democracy” to the Middle East and Central Asia, the American people were easy patsies to the maniacal ideology of American fascists in power.

What we call American-style imperialism has thus evolved, with 9/11 acting as its birth pangs, in open arrogance and unilateralism, in open state sponsored terrorism and hostility, in open defiance of and in direct confrontation with the peoples of the globe. Where once clandestine mass murder, violence, war, coups, repression, tyranny, executions, assassinations, disappearances, collective punishment, dehumanization and torture dictated the empire’s maneuvers to control the people and places of the world, with its assortment of dictators, tyrants, juntas, kings, proconsuls, ministers and elite fraudsters helping maintain and expand the fields of empire, the next stage of the empire’s temerity has brought imperialism into plain sight.

Today the world entire can see, with the exception of those living inside the empire itself, -- for most citizens choose a cocktail of delusion, denial, beliefs in exceptionalism and the inherent goodness of America, an absence of reason and self-imposed ignorance in order to secure an “out of sight, out of mind” mentality – what millions of human beings have experienced for decades. American imperialism and empire building has become an accepted reality, a “new normal,” with its attempts at building and securing hegemonic power throughout the world, through threats, violence, war, economic strangulation and market colonialism, as evident as cold in winter and as real as sunrises in the east.


Transformation


What is new, and what is not fully understood by the vast majority of the 310 million people it affects, however, is that the empire has brought clandestine corporatism and authoritarian rule inside the very shores of America. It has begun importing the very essence of the imperial methods it has and continues to use abroad, most of which have been very successful in controlling its domain, and thus expanding its global hegemony.

This has been achieved by the criminal manipulation of psychology; by the induction of fear into the populace; by the mass propaganda of sacrificing liberty for security – which achieves neither – ; by conditioning the masses to think only in foggy black and white, good versus evil reasoning; by gutting of the economy, thus creating hardship, financial insecurity and a need to scapegoat (classic divide and conquer strategy); by destroying jobs and wages, slowly destroying the middle class, in essence making this group slaves to debt and predatory capitalism; by waging perpetual imperial wars designed to control resources and strategic locations and transfer trillions of dollars from average Americans toward the pockets of the establishment; by the exponential rise in militarism, the military-industrial-energy complex and the subsequent allocation of ever-expanding budgets towards the Department of War and away from other government services; by the decline of critical thinking and reasoning skills by the purposeful decimation of education; by the systemic pattern of lies, deceit, propaganda and brainwashing endemic in corporate media; by the wholesale auctioning off of all branches, departments and agencies of government to the corporate world; and by the embedding of corporatists and fascism’s enablers into all sectors of the United States government and its propaganda apparatus.

With a more than malleable citizenry conditioned for obedience and passivity, it is easy to see why corporatism rises like a phoenix in the nation of the Founding Fathers. It is inside the belly of the beast itself where the empire has declared open war against the American people, in the span of a few years unleashing a devastating assault on the rights, freedoms and liberties of every American. It has been in the last seven years where the policy of eroding the power, strength and wealth of most working and middle class Americans has had its greatest success, thereby creating an almost impotent subservient class of serfs and slaves. It is inside the bowels of the empire itself where the people are under constant attack, with the livelihood of hundreds of millions of people being gutted and eviscerated on a daily basis.

The objective, of course, is simple. Using fear mongering and scapegoating of an external enemy, a dreaded dark skinned bogeyman of unquestionable “evil”, preferably one that is unknown and different, therefore, the very object of fear, one that coincidentally inhabits the lands whose resources and locations you covet, thereby validating war and destruction and conquest and occupation, the populace is bombarded with the recipe of engendered hatred and, of course, perpetual fear. Straight out of the Orwellian playbook, then, the concocted fear of the Arab and Muslim is used both to conquer resources and land needed to expand hegemony, with the acquiescence and passivity of the people, as well as to eviscerate the freedoms of and better control the lives of the population.

A populace in constant fear of “its way of life,” of its cherished “freedoms and liberties,” which the catapulted propaganda spews mercilessly on a daily basis, making the repeated lie a certifiable truth in the eyes of tens of millions, will inevitably place unbridled faith, even if blind, on the elements of government which, by definition, are entrusted to protect and defend the people. If hundreds of millions have no problem placing blind faith in a god that has never before been seen, heard, smelled or felt, relying on the stories and language of our primitive past, refusing to use reason and critical thinking to combat myth and fables, how can we expect them to not place blind faith in a tangible unitary executive acting as father figure – or alpha male for that matter – that offers promises of security and protection in a terribly uncertain and frightening world – albeit a fictional charade at that – while preaching from the bully pulpit?

Along with an approaching economic meltdown – which inevitably causes anger, hatred, scapegoating, false patriotism, xenophobia, racism, crime, hardship, hunger, suffering, poverty, fear, division and insecurity in a large segment of the population, thereby making tens of millions easy targets willing to accept authoritarian and tyrannical rule over their lives – the use of an external enemy as convenient scapegoat the riled masses can concentrate their wrath on virtually guarantees national compliance and acceptance of the erosion of Constitutional guarantees in favor of a police and surveillance state under corporatist rule. This formula has worked wonders for many of modern history’s most ruthless authoritarians.

This combination of economic shock fused with fear of terror and of a very dangerous external enemy that wants to destroy the peoples way of life is a recipe for a successful implementation of corporatist and authoritarian doctrine throughout the nation. The anger, resentment and negative energy of the masses, most afflicted by the hardships of a severe recession or near depression, is easily corralled into an amalgam of anger that can be manipulated and channeled in whatever direction the corporatist elite chose. Under these conditions, and having a scapegoat by which hatred and anger and emotions can be directed at, the corporatist element in leadership can dictate empire’s follies and aggressiveness with reckless abandon.

Together with a spineless and colluding legislature, – nothing but a collection of fraudsters, snake oil salesmen, charlatans, professional liars, opportunists and corrupt politicians, each bending over to the thrusts of the corporatist world, their powers decimated, their significance diminished, having now become but an insignificant opinion-generating entity, firmly under the control and power of the unitary executive, unable to enforce or keep the president-emperor in check – the government in Washington has become the very entity destroying freedoms, liberties and rights and helping to build and secure the infrastructure needed for a permanent corporatist, surveillance society, a police state, an authoritarian reality.

What no terrorist organization could ever accomplish has over the last seven years been done by the same government most Americans believe incapable of wrongdoing, the same government we place blind faith and trust in, the same government we actually believe has an opposition within its ranks. Ironically, what the external bogeyman could never take away is being methodically plundered by our internal “protectors,” and with our unbridled, yet ignorant support and enthusiasm. Taking candy from a baby is a much more difficult endeavor. With the state and corporations colluding together, the masses are left to fend for themselves.

In fact, it has been the government, with the help of the corporate media, that has terrorized the citizenry in an open and continuous act of psychological warfare. It has been the government, along with the Ministry of Truth, that has instilled fear and insecurity into the population. It is they who, under any definition of terrorism, have become our terrorists, our real enemy, our internal bogeyman. Fear mongering has never been so easy and, when the collective trauma of 9/11 wears off, all that is needed to reinvigorate the senses of the masses are lies of further attack, more dehumanization of the enemy, propaganda of imminent threat and insecurity and, if all else fails, one more false flag event.


Read Part Two

Operation Iraq Forever

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Catastrophic Success


The occupation of Iraq, still illegal and immoral by any sense of human understanding, has now run into its fourth bloody and horrific year, becoming a quagmire for America and a vast killing field for Iraqis. Indeed, for Iraqis, America’s invasion and subsequent occupation has been and will continue to be one massive war crime, an onslaught of criminality against humanity not seen since World War Two. It is they, the Iraqi people, who have undergone tremendous hardship, and it is they who will continue to suffer in horrific ways, due to the lunacy and delusions of America’s miscreant leaders. Indeed, hell on Earth has been imported into Iraq without so much as a care, concern or bother from the American people, without so much as a protest or two by the world entire.

For America and her people, on the other hand, to say that the Iraq debacle is the greatest strategic disaster in American foreign policy history is an understatement, for the implications of America’s defeat at the hands of Iraqis have only now begun to be seen, with its reverberations to be felt for years to come. What was once considered a cakewalk by an arrogant nation, basking in the glory of exceptionalism and ignorance, blinded to reality by addictions to materialism and televised charades, instead turned into an inextricable sand trap that threatens to turn a New American Century into the Last American Decade.

For unlike Vietnam, a backwater nation at the outer periphery of world affairs, where America’s defeat did not disturb the grand chess match of Cold War geostrategy or cause worldwide geopolitical earthquakes, Iraq is at the epicenter of the world, sitting atop vast oil fields, possessing two fresh water rivers in a region where water is scarce, situated in the middle of vitally strategic lands sought by rising powers and dwindling empires. A defeat in Iraq, as is already apparent, and had long since been predicted by many, would thus severely damage the interests of America, thereby altering a global balance of power where one superpower dominates the rest of the world. Inside her shores, a defeat would, similar to what happened after Vietnam, alienate her people away from further wars of conquest, thus making it harder to implement the plans for a New American Century, thus destroying the once great controlling power engendered by the New Pearl Harbor.

The occupation of Iraq has and will continue to severely cripple America, both in treasure and blood, bogging it down in a grueling guerilla war of attrition for years to come. Already the war and occupation has lasted longer than America’s involvement in World War II. Already it has cost, in only four years, over one trillion dollars. Already, America’s military is overstretched, overstressed, overburdened and overworked. So far, close to 3,500 troops have died, with up to 30,000 maimed and injured; tens of thousands of personnel have been forced to serve more than two tours of duty. The psychological costs to thousands of soldiers will never be quantified, as will the societal damage done by people returning home with different minds, different lives and altered circumstances.

Yet in spite of the apparent defeat, the apparent debacle taking place in Iraq, the American leviathan, that corporatist element within the parameters of the state, that elitist cabal embedded in predatory capitalist markets, will not allow itself or the nation to be extricated from Iraq, for the price of such a calamity would be disastrous. For the Iraq War was first and foremost a war for control of oil, that most important of natural resources, that devil’s excrement needed to run the engine called modern human civilization.

The subsequent occupation of Iraq, beyond the obvious lies of WMD, bringing democracy and freedom, ridding Iraqis of tyranny and Saddam, and fighting al-Qaeda in the “war on terror,” was built on the necessity of pacifying and controlling the Iraqi populace so that the rape and pillage of Iraq’s oil could commence. For this war has always been and will always be about black blood, that dark substance that condemns and curses all who live above it, and empowers and enriches those who extract it. He who controls the oil controls the world, after all, and he who controls the world controls humankind’s destiny.

It is the devil’s excrement that sustains modern civilization; its births Empire and makes overlords of those that control it. It is also a truism that those who seek the power of modern empire must make a deal with the devil to drink blood from its veins. It is this deal with the devil that invariably resurrects violence, destruction, suffering and the worst in human wickedness.


Empire’s Gas Station


As such, to purposefully give up such a prize as the oil fields of Iraq, along with its perfect strategic location, would be tantamount to giving up on a burgeoning empire, something the elite and the corporatists of the nation are not yet ready to do. Controlling the oil markets of the world, along with the spigots, pipelines and oil fields of Iraq, dictating supply and demand to the globe, possessing the power to control the amount of oil a rival or rising superpower is allowed to have, and establishing a beachhead for further attempts at acquiring yet more oil and gas, this time in Iran and Central Asia, is too tempting a proposition for America’s elite to extricate their armies from Mesopotamia. In truth, to leave Iraq would be to leave behind all delusions of a New American Century. It would be akin to declaring defeat to Russia and China, in essence granting these rising powers Iraq’s oil fields on a silver platter and cementing the precipitous fall of the American Empire itself.

Iraq is too valuable, in the minds of America’s elite and her corporatists, to simply walk away from. For all intents and purposes, therefore, Iraq has become America’s 51st state, a colony that will act as America’s gas station for decades to come. Iraq is destined to become the grease that provides the lubrication needed to run the great American engine. It will act as America’s aircraft carrier, the easier to patrol the world’s most strategic region. In time, Iraq will be used to invade, threaten, hold hostage and/or conquer the oil fields of Iran and those of the central Asian basin. From Iraq America’s new national security infrastructure, such as pipelines and refineries, can best be defended from any barbarian horde. Iraq is today the gateway towards attaining the Empire the elite and the delusional have always envisioned. It is the gateway towards power, control and untold wealth.

Of course the sacrifice of American treasure and blood is and will continue to be of no significance to those possessing the delusional blueprints of a New American Century. After all, it is not their children sent off to war, becoming cannon fodder, returning in a body bag, with missing appendages, burned bodies or psychologically maimed minds. It is not their wages being taxed in order to pay for the ever-expanding corporatist army. It is not their hard earned money being expropriated so that energy giants can further enrich themselves to the tune of tens of billions of dollars in profits every year.

To the elite way of thinking, the sacrifice of 3,500 dead soldiers, most poor and working class, from rural cesspools or urban jungles, is a minor and inconsequential inconvenience, along with the injury of 30,000 more, in the pursuit of Empire. These brave and oftentimes naïve and brainwashed soldiers are simply the expendable tools of wealth accumulation and empire building, the robots needed to pull the levers and push the buttons of the vast arsenal of killing machines developed by the military industrial complex. They are cannon fodder used not for defending freedom and democracy, but for defending the corporate bottom line and its shareholder wealth. In a nation of 300 million people, the death in Iraq of 3,500 soldiers, or 30,000 for that matter, is of little importance to the elite who see poor men and women as a means to an end. They are the collateral damage sacrificed in the name of predatory and debauched capitalism. They are the catalysts for corporatism to thrive.

Sadly, America will remain in Iraq for decades to come, occupying sand and dune, living behind massive concrete walls, inside enormous embassies and bases, all built to protect the ultimate prize of the 21st century: oil. Iraq is now a giant American forward operating base, a geostrategic prize from where the delusional elite can amplify their presence both in the Middle East and the Caspian basin. From Iraq the oil and natural gas fields of Iran are but a stone’s throw away. From Iraq and Afghanistan Central Asia becomes easier to threaten and control, easier for its energy resources to be exploited and defended against potential adversaries. From Iraq it is easier for the rising empire to contain, control and check the advancements of Russia, China and India.

The future death of thousands of American soldiers, and the maiming of tens of thousands more, is a reality that will inevitably come in the years ahead, will be but the price of doing business, of maximizing profit and power, of controlling the black blood necessary for empire to rise and breathe. Thousands dead and tens of thousands maimed is of little consequence or importance to those whose vision of delusion includes an empire greeted by the world as liberator, with flowers and candy thrown at its feet. Sacrifices need to be made for the sake of consumerism and materialism, for gluttony and greed, after all. Just not for the elite that steer the American ship. The trillions of dollars that have already been spent, and those trillions that will invariably be needed in the future will of course be taken from the American people, their treasure pillaged, their wages raped in the pursuit of empire. It will be us, the common peasant, that will be forced to absorb the present and future costs of delusions of grandeur and self-aggrandizing hubris. It will be our children who will have to sacrifice freedom, rights and blood.

The added benefit to the elite of this robbery of the American taxpayer is that for every dollar that goes to the Iraq War, to the military-industrial complex, to the bank accounts of the war profiteers and the energy corporatists, one less dollar is allocated for social services, education, healthcare, infrastructure and the general welfare of the American people. One more dollar taken out through taxes equals one less dollar in the pocket of the people, thereby eviscerating the middle class and shifting the burden of war from the wealthy to the middle and working classes. By gutting the middle class, by putting severe pressure on its ability to subsist on already diminishing wages, the elite further separate themselves from the rest of us, increasing the wealth gap, and by consequence, increasing their power and control over us as well. When the rich get richer and the poor poorer, only a nation of fools fails to see who wins and who loses.

As such, the Iraq War is also a war against the American people, for it is designed to make us anemic creatures dependent on the decisions of the elite. It is engineered in part to increase injustice, inequality, exploitation and dominion over us, robbing us of our power to mobilize and seek change. By redistributing America’s treasure away from the people and to the few elite and the corporations, using war as pretext and fear as a conditioning element, government is being rewired to stop acting in the interest of the masses. Meanwhile, it is being made to serve the interests of the corporate world, which have been getting enormously powerful through the looting of our treasure, under the rubric of fighting the fictional war on terror and under the illusion of destroying a nation only to later rebuild it. The shifting of resources away from what helps the people to what empowers the corporate world is but one more sign that the age of American corporatism is upon us.

The belief that the Iraq War will end once the Bush administration leaves office, and that American soldiers will return home, is an illusion and a mirage, a concoction of wishful thinking that has no basis in reality. America has cemented its presence, firmly planting the foundations for a long and prolonged occupation. Permanent military bases have been erected, as has the largest embassy the world has ever seen. It has manipulated elections so that its puppets are elevated to the highest echelons of Iraqi power. It has written oil laws favorable to its interests that it then demands be passed by so called sovereign Iraqi lawmakers, in essence writing the same laws it needs to make legal the exploitation and robbery of Iraq’s oil fields.

The Middle East is the most vital region in the world in terms of energy allocation and its subsequent strategic control, and is therefore of tremendous national importance to a nation desiring to elevate itself to full-fledged empire status. It has controlled the region for decades now, either by military force, destruction of democracy and through its large cadre of puppets, and by occupying Iraq with a large military force, it now possesses a stranglehold on the world’s second largest energy reserves. And, by making colonies of Afghanistan and Iraq, by supporting the tyrants of Central Asia, it now surrounds the third largest oil reserves in the world, namely those of Iran. Its rich oil and gas fields, now targeted for conquest, are located just across the Iraq border, within invading distance for American forces, far away from Tehran, close enough to smell the fumes.

Iraq, therefore, is a prize that will never be relinquished, and is the reason America will never extricate herself from the debacle it has created. No amount of pre-invasion ignorance, occupying incompetence and blinding arrogance will force America to abandon her cherished possession. No continued bleeding through a thousand cuts will force it to return home in defeat. To the architects of empire, there is more than enough cannon fodder, more than enough treasure from which to maintain control of Iraq’s oil fields. There is too much invested already, too much left to gain, too many fragile egos to appease, too many insecure men to protect, to simply abandon a prize that has been cherished by the elite for decades.

We are in Iraq, and though broken by our hands, though destroyed by our military, she is now ours, for our greed and our love of comfort and consumerism demands that she be pillaged of her oil and raped of her sovereignty. Our addiction to her black blood demands that we care nothing for the plight of her people or for the decimation of her society. It demands that we cast a blind eye to the holocaust now taking place there and the ethnic cleansing destroying families and neighborhoods.

It demands that we see Iraqis as subhuman brown skinned aliens, their plight and suffering ignored, their decimation at the hands of our military and our government lost in hollow memory banks. It is because of oil, after all, that we can share in the privileges of living in the wealthiest nation the world has ever known. And so to continue living in comfort and consumerism, the beast must be fed, it must gorge upon the dark liquid of the third world, and the deal with the devil must, invariably, continue well into the future.

As such, no matter which member of the political duopoly is in the White House, no matter how loudly the citizenry demands a pullout, the United States will not leave Iraq in the foreseeable future. The two headed hydra is, after all, attached to the same body, obeying the same master. No amount of lies or spin or promises will alter this reality. We live in the New American Century, after all, where reality is the domain of those in power. As the will of the people no longer matters or counts, our voices will be silenced, our growing anger suppressed. Sure the illusion of troops returning home will be created, with scenes of families reuniting and hero’s coming home gracing the airwaves, yet in the real world, back in the land of permanent bases and rich oil fields, back where enormous and modern embassies rise on the banks of ancient rivers, tens of thousands of troops will remain, guarding America’s ultimate prize, the blood that sustains Empire, comfort and the military-industrial-energy complex.

The mirage of American troops returning from Iraq with their heads held high, as always marching triumphantly, as always having defeated evil, will captivate millions of ignorant but otherwise well-intentioned Americans. To millions more, however, this charade will be seen for the fiction that it is, for Iraq will remain a very dangerous place, especially for energy exploiters and oil conglomerates eager to further enrich themselves by pillaging a nation blind. Tens of thousands of American soldiers will remain, we will be told, to secure democracy and freedom for the Iraqi people, to ensure security in the cities, to make sure the “democratically” elected puppet is protected from al-Qaeda. We will be made to think our soldiers need to remain to protect Iraqis from themselves.

In truth, tens of thousands of soldiers will establish a permanent presence in Iraq because the Anglo-American energy consortium will need protection while it pillages and rapes Iraq of her natural resources. America’s military will be needed to defend from the targeted sabotage and rebellion of freedom fighters, from the expected assassinations and kidnappings of energy workers. It will ask to protect pipelines, oil fields and their infrastructure; it will be told to suppress strikes and the rage of Iraqi oil workers. The safety and freedom of Iraqis will mean absolutely nothing in the grand scheme of greed and gluttony and American empire. To the empire, oil trumps blood just as much as profit trumps people.


Brand Marketing


Of course to hear the Iraq War apologists tell it, and there are many of these individuals in government and the corporatist media, America is in Iraq because we are fighting al-Qaeda, and nobody else. To the dwindling delusionists and supporters of this illegal war who are somehow inexplicably still given a voice in the media and in print, the illusion must be made that America is at war, given this war on terror, with the dreaded bogeymen from al-Qaeda, those same evildoers who attacked us on 9/11. This is the only way to keep the charade going in the minds of millions that America must remain in Iraq, staying the course, as always knowing that the deeply embedded myth of America being the epitome of good and always triumphing over evil, epitomized by whatever convenient scapegoat is needed, will again capture the minds of the naïve and gullible.

This fantasy, of course, is the last refuge of scoundrels, for it has been proven over and over again that only two to five percent of fighters in Iraq are foreign. But this does not preclude scoundrels from preaching lies to the congregation nonetheless. A convenient enemy is needed to validate the Iraq occupation, however, one that has already been conditioned into the American mind as being nefarious and monstrous.

Indeed, what America confronts is guerilla warfare in an urban setting. Her soldiers, sent to protect the interests of the elite and those of the military-industrial-energy complex, are engaged in a battle against freedom fighters, the vast majority from Iraq, most common peasants once living ordinary lives who want nothing more than to rid their land of the occupying forces. From the beginning of time resistance fighters have waged war against the more powerful invading and occupying force, as always using their skills and talents to bleed their rivals to death.

Like American Revolutionaries, Iraq’s freedom fighters fight for independence and freedom, for nationality and to expel foreign forces from their country. If America or any other nation were invaded and occupied, resistance fighters would immediately spring up as well, forming an army of brave patriots using the tactics of the poor to try and contain the weapons of the much more powerful and wealthier military. Unfortunately, it is the poor of both countries waging war against each other, killing and maiming one another, for the benefit of the wealthy and powerful. Such is war that the poor are always made to fight each other when it is the elite that is their common enemy.

Yet the truth of who and what America’s army is fighting can never be mentioned, for a myth has been embedded into the average American mind that America is in Iraq to bring freedom and democracy to Iraq, not to fight their freedom fighters or rape their women. Since an occupying power cannot fully dehumanize a legitimate resistance movement, given that its cause is nobler than that of the occupying force itself, it must resort to the realm of fiction and propaganda, concocting lies and distortions to smear the resistance. Only by making freedom fighters seem subhuman or evil in the eyes of its people can the occupying force thereby make it acceptable to mass murder, dehumanize, torture and illegally detain Iraqis.

Indeed, resistance movements such as those fighting the American military in Iraq are allowed under international law. When such an invasion and subsequent occupation has been proven to be based on lies and deceit, becoming immoral and illegal, a crime against humanity, any resistance movement would find broad support among the peoples of the world. Indeed, these movements are romanticized and applauded, for they become brave patriots and freedom fighters against criminality, illegality and immorality. Such was the case with the French resistance against the Nazis, the Jewish resistance in the ghettos, the plight of blacks in apartheid South Africa and the struggle of Palestinians against the oppressive and apartheid methods of the Israelis.

As such, in order to marginalize and vilify the resistance, in order for the American populace to accept wanton destruction and killing, in order to transform individuals fighting for independence and for an end to occupation, the impression must be made by the creators of reality that the Iraqi mujahedeen are really al-Qaeda in Iraq, thereby becoming the central myth of why America is in Iraq and why it must continue to remain there. This way, the dreaded evildoer extraordinaire, that entity that continuously haunts the American mind, that bogeyman that in the original conspiracy theory was said to have brought down World Trade Center towers 1,2 and 7 through controlled demolitions and at freefall speed, killing 3,000 innocent Americans in the process, can continue to spread fear and insecurity in the belief structure of millions of Americans who, like Pavlovian dogs, cower in fear at the sound of the word al-Qaeda. It is al-Qaeda, after all, and not Iraq freedom fighters, who attacked us on 9/11. It is al-Qaeda, after all, that planned war games on the day of 9/11 and ordered fighter planes to stand down, not Iraqi resistance fighters.

Thus, by using the concocted scapegoat of al-Qaeda, having escaped the caves and mud huts of Afghanistan, this time festering and planning to take over Iraq if we let them, and hiding the reality of whom exactly the American military is fighting in Iraq, millions of Americans readily accept the continued occupation as being beneficial to their own safety and security. For, as the scoundrels and the liars love to tell us, we are fighting them there so we do not have to fight them here. If we leave, we are told, they, being al-Qaeda, will follow us back, undoubtedly to wage holy jihad in the little towns of Indiana and Nebraska. This way, the creators of the new reality hide the true rival in Iraq while at the same time manipulating the American public into allowing the continued debacle taking place.

As long as the term al-Qaeda is used in symphony with Iraq, as long as Iraq and the so-called war on terror are similarly correlated, millions of Americans will continue to support an occupation that is illegal and immoral. As such, the Iraqi resistance movement will continue to gain strength, it will continue to engage the American military, and a war of attrition will continue to kill and maim both Americans and Iraqis. This way, a vicious cycle of violence will not cease, for Americans will continue to associate the need to wage war in Iraq, believing, albeit mistakenly, that America fights al-Qaeda in the fictional war on terror, not knowing or understanding the true nature of the rival.

With violence begetting violence, more resistance fighters will join the movement, as naturally occurs in a guerilla war against an occupation. With manipulations and lies, the American people will be made to believe that al-Qaeda in Iraq is growing more dangerous, that it is expanding, that it will indeed follow us home if we leave, that it presents a clear and present danger that must be defeated. Thus, the ingredients for the endless war the elite have dreamt about for decades, and the key to staying permanently in Iraq, have managed to rise out of one nation’s desire to be free of occupation and another’s systematically damaged and manipulated psyche, born on 9/11, that freezes in horror and loses all ability to reason and think logically at the mention of the words al-Qaeda and war on terror. As long as the term al-Qaeda is used over the airwaves, as long as it retains its corroding effect, the American people will allow the fictional war on terror to continue. Such is the damage done by the masters of reality.

Quite conveniently, then, Iraq’s freedom fighters are morphed by the state and the corporatist media into al-Qaeda, thereby validating America’s presence and continued occupation of a nation, and a people, fighting for her freedom. The liberty and ease by which the apologists of the war grant al-Qaeda franchises throughout Iraq, indeed, wherever America seems to pick fights, without even a hint at investigation by the corporatist media, underlies the fallacy of this myth. Along with the purported death of probably 100 al-Qaeda’s number two’s, it also demonstrates the level of propaganda and manipulation the Pentagon and its lackeys fill the media, and thus our minds with. Truth is the first casualty of war, after all. Therefore, under the auspices of fighting terrorism, America can stay and focus on the real and most important task at hand, namely the complete control, rape and pillage of Iraq’s oil fields and pipelines.


The Curse of Black Gold


And so America will continue fighting in Iraq because the state says we are fighting al-Qaeda, because it blames Iraq’s puppet government for its own incompetence and ignorance, because it says through its stenographers and talking heads that the war on terror must be fought, even if it takes decades to win, and because America is good and exceptional and she must defeat evil, just as she has always done. Along with our permanent occupation, we will continue mass murdering, torturing, dehumanizing and falsely imprisoning hundreds of thousands of Iraqis whose only crime, whose only curse, is living atop the devil’s excrement, that dark liquid waiting to be gorged on by a most greedy, ignorant and arrogant drug addict.

For when it comes to dominating that black gold called oil, easily available for conquest in various third world nations, either through puppets, market colonialism or military might, no dark skinned, non-European looking human is safe from the tentacles of modern empire, for soon subhuman you will be called, seen as primitive, as an animal, needing the “enlightened” hand of Western intervention for salvation. When the aim of categorizing you as alien, evil and below the parameters of being human is achieved your family will be murdered, your people displaced, your life forever altered, your plight ignored. Your death will never equal that of an American or a British citizen, for you are a third worlder, a person of the southern globe, bred to be exploited and oppressed, your lands becoming the feudal estates of corporatism, your blood, sweat and tears falling only after you have slaved yourself for the north’s comfort and wealth.

The death of your son will not be counted, the rape of your daughter will be dismissed as lies, the dehumanization of your father and the torture of your brother will never see light of day, for your country has been targeted as the next petrol station that will invariably be forced to pay tribute to the purple robe of empire. Whether you live in Nigeria, Venezuela, the Caspian Sea basin or Iran, it does not matter, for you live where black gold abounds, where the drug of oil can be found. As such your lands will become toxic, your air and water filled with poison. All the while, even as your natural resources are pillaged, your nation raped, your nation collapsing, you will never see a dime from the corporations of the empire. For poverty is your destiny, even as vast wealth lies below your feet. Subsisting on garbage, living in shacks, your national wealth stolen and embezzled, you thus realize that the black gold you were told would transform your nation has been nothing but a terrible curse you wish never existed.

Of course if you live where the devil’s excrement is bountiful you cannot help but notice the addiction of the empire, and how maddened it becomes if its fix is not satiated. You realize that death, destruction and suffering are the only realities and expectations for nations not willing to pay tribute to the empire. Thus, if you are not careful, if you are not ready, the next knock on your door might very well be that of a most immoral and criminal addict, ready to kill you and destroy your nation for its next much needed fix. And then you will automatically become the Empire’s next enemy, its next terrorist scapegoat, becoming the evildoer chosen to strike fear in the American populace. Inevitably, your face, your people and your culture will become the poster children in the next marketing campaign and psychological war against the American citizenry, designed, as always, by fascism’s public relations experts, its army of little Goebbels.


Deal With the Devil


America cannot exorcise itself from its addiction to oil that, like a demon inside our body, possesses us day and night, demanding that we satisfy our insatiable thirst for black blood. In this deal with the devil that we long ago made, we became dependent on a natural resource that, while not plentiful inside our own shores, is readily abundant in the Middle East, Central Asia, West Africa and Venezuela. For this reason the Middle East has become a militarized region, a vast feudal estate owned by the masters and lords of energy, protected by the Empire itself. For this reason it has become the world’s most volatile and sought after region. Inside its borders puppets and despots and proctors overlook America’s oil fields, proclaiming themselves princes, kings and presidents, as always oppressing and exploiting their people, as always overseeing the empire’s interests.

In our deal with the devil, the more we taste the more we want; the more we continue to grow the bigger we want to get. The more powerful we are the greedier and more gluttonous we become, expanding the size of everything we own, including our stomachs. Millions of us believe oil is abundant, as if it grows yearly in some global breadbasket. Millions of us fail to understand that hundreds of thousands of human beings are killed and maimed, and tens of millions live in perpetual indigence and oftentimes are forced to confront armed conflict because of our insatiable addiction to oil. Millions of us fail to see that it is our standards of living, our greed and gluttony, that contributes to so much misery and destruction worldwide.

Yet year after year our greed compels us toward ever larger vehicles and homes, bigger toys and an exponentially growing consumption habit. Through our actions it seems that we care nothing for the planet or its inhabitants, instead filling our minds with the arrogance and apathy of a spoiled child, transforming ourselves into a most insecure schoolyard bully. We behave as if we are entitled to what does not belong to us, in essence forcing the school’s other kids to give us their lunch money, threatening with violence those that decline or stand up for themselves.

Our greed and gluttony, our indifference and arrogance, our insistence on maintaining and even expanding our standards of living, all at the expense of the planet and its people, is the reason we invade, occupy and exploit weaker nations. It is the reason Iraq is in chaos, why Nigeria is on the verge of full rebellion, why Central Asia is full of despotic leaders and why Venezuela is vilified. It will be the reason why Russia and China will in the years ahead become rivals and enemies, why more and more people around the globe hate America and why we spend more on military equipment and weapons than the entire world put together. It is when we look in the mirror that the devil’s excrement can be seen, acting like an aura around our head, smearing our face with the darkness of wickedness and the madness of addiction.

We can continue believing the exceptionalism of America, the grandeur of her virtues, that of her leaders and her people, yet reality and truth are altogether different, presenting circumstances too uncomfortable for us to contemplate yet important enough to try and understand. We can continue living the delusion of myth and the charade of the American Dream. We can continue being brainwashed and conditioned that our way of life is the only way of life, that the world entire must conform to this way of life, and that bogeymen hate us for said way of life. Yet to confront the evil’s done in our name by the government we elect or fail to stop, we must realize that in many ways, we are to be blamed, we are guilty in failing to act, in putting a stop to an unsustainable standard of living.

Until we realize the damage we do around the planet so that we may live in comfort, so that we may enjoy the highest standards of living humans have ever had, so that we may drive giant SUVs and live in expansive, heated and air-conditioned homes, America will remain in Iraq indefinitely, her military garrisoned inside bases clustered around oil fields, facilities and pipelines. Until we confront the predatory capitalism that is turning America into a corporatist state and the world into a giant sweatshop Iraq and others like it will continue. Until we look ourselves in the mirror and realize that it is our failure to act and alter a doomed course, that it is our indifference to the damage our lifestyles cause Earth, we will finally grasp that it is ourselves, more than anything else, that are the reason we will remain in Iraq long into the future, for our way of life must be maintained and fed through the world’s last remaining petroleum reserves.

Until we realize our gluttony and greed, until we decide to put a stop to our addiction and arrogance, a new version of Iraq will metastasize every decade or so, popping up somewhere around the globe where black gold exists, every time new oil fields are needed to expand our economy or our comfort level, causing untold suffering and destruction in the process, resulting in resistance, conflict and a ever-growing hatred of America. To feed itself the empire thus needs to increase its military, it thus needs to maintain over 750 bases worldwide. To feed its peoples’ ever-growing greed and gluttony, its ever expanding waistline, Iraq must remain within the empire’s violent and voracious claws, becoming a colony of imperialism, to be exploited and raped.

No amount of propaganda or brainwashing or delusion or denial can make extinct this truth. We are thus stuck in Iraq for the long term, for her resources and land is needed to sustain and maintain the America we live in. To believe the empire will ever leave voluntarily is to live in delusion and fall prey to the myths of our conditioning. We have made a deal with the devil, and now we must pay its consequences.

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