Time to Disband Homeland Security and Renew Democracy
In the aftermath of 9-11, American politics and government went slightly insane. America turned its collective back on 200 plus years of successful democratic government and turned toward its dark side. The national security state began to be seen as needed and desirable. This insane model of government always puts the State over the Individual and becomes both corrupt and dictatorial. Examples in history are numerous.
The United States of America began as a reaction to corrupt, dictatorial rule from the English monarchy. In modern times, the world has seen “national security” states arise in Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy, the Soviet Union, Pinochet Chile, and Franco Spain. Other examples can be found all over the globe. Dictatorial powers were seized by corrupt political figures with ardent followers blinded by ideology following “national security” crises in every example. After 9-11, we started speeding down that slippery slope. It is not too late for us as a nation to come to a screeching halt and return to our American political traditions should we make that choice as a nation.
Current events are forcing us to examine our course based on results instead of ideology. We have seen a great American city almost destroyed because we put national disaster relief under the control of incompetents at the Homeland Security Department. New Orleans started opening the eyes of American citizens everywhere.
Our government is ignoring federal law whenever it so desires in the name of national security. We have government run secret prisons. We lock people away without filing criminal charges and never set trial dates. We conduct torture and ignore the documented facts about that torture. We launch aggressive wars based on false information and propaganda aimed at our citizens along with the rest of the world.
We trample individual rights and civil liberties won at great expense for millions of American soldiers over generations in the name of “national security.” We conduct government in secret to hide corruption at the highest levels claiming security concerns. We spy on political dissenters who are seeking to return our nation to traditional American political values. We use Homeland Security and the American military to spy on average American citizens doing their civic duty.
The Bush Republicans controlling our government encourage the abuse of public office to advance strictly partisan political goals. They are trying falsely to redefine American patriotism as blindly following the most extreme of Republican Right policies and ideology.
They are assaulting the Bill of Rights and attacking the Constitutional principles of our nation. Our Constitutional system of checks and balances between competing branches of government, which was designed to prevent dictatorial government and guarantee individual liberty, has almost been overthrown under Bush Republican rule. Separation of Church and State has been severely undermined by deliberate policy thereby threatening both with the corruption. Government has no business interfering in the religious aspects of our lives.
Homeland Security can act as a cover for all kinds of corruption and political abuse. Secrecy in government has always fostered corruption and abuse. Traditionally, America divided our intelligence and law enforcement agencies up into many different competing units. The competition held each unit act more aggressively and efficiently. The different units helped prevent abuses by other units using our traditional checks and balances system. The system worked very well as long as it was overseen by a competent chief executive in the White House, effectively monitored by Congress and followed federal court guidelines.
9-11 did not demonstrate a failure of our system based on design. It instead demonstrated that the individuals involved failed the nation. The White House dropped the ball on national security in the months immediately before 9-11. Bush, Cheney, Rumsfield and Ashcroft were largely responsible along with their aides and other individuals in various federal agencies. They were not coordinating the activities of the various federal agencies involved in law enforcement or intelligence effectively.
The hysteria and fear fostered and used by Bush, Cheney and the rest of the Bush Republicans was used to cover their failures and to achieve unchecked political power. Bush and Cheney should have been impeached for incompetence for allowing the 9-11 attacks to happen!
We now have a Homeland Security Department interfering with normal domestic political activity and threatening our democratic form of government. We need to return to our previous separation of the various units system concerning the law enforcement and intelligence agencies. We will get better unbiased intelligence information and more efficient law enforcement without as much politicization.
Homeland Security officials were somehow involved in the permitting unsupervised voting counting in Ohio during the 2004 Presidential election. The media was blocked from observing the vote count in at least one County as a result of interference from Homeland Security according to numerous media reports.
In Idaho, Homeland Security was used to harass and intimidate a federal employee over an anti-War bumper sticker on his personal automobile Red State, Meet Police State http://www.boiseweekly.com/gyrobase/content?oid=oid:158729 . Homeland Security seems to be engaged in forcing American citizens to support the unpopular, unjust and unwise Iraq War policy of the Bush-Cheney Administration.
The national security state has really gotten totally out of control in Alaska, as evidenced in this recent example by Brad Friedman at Brad Blog.
“A bizarre story concerning Alaska's 2004 Election has taken yet another even more bizarre turn this week, The BRAD BLOG has learned.
Pogo had it absolutely correct, it is not unscrupulous and agendised politicos and their cronies to whom blame must fall, it is us all.
Democracy works only when we all participate. In the ancient city states of Greece the entire populace would turn out to decide important issues, here in America these two thousand plus years later we are lucky if 50% of those eligible actually bother to vote.
Again and again we find the electorate unwilling to do any thinking about issues, letting others decide their political choices for them, and, quite unfortunately, many choose Rush Limbaugh and Bill O'Reilly. After five years of corruption, distortion, outright lies, gross incompetence, changing stories and cover ups so blatant as to be borderline amusing if it werent so tragic we see a large part of our voting public very disinterested and disbelieving of verifiable facts.
When challenging views one gets only sophomoric push button phrases as "liberals lie", "we havent been attacked since Bush went to war", "everyone challenging this administration is unpatriotic", etc. Nothing of substance, nothing that one can directly confront. Wherein lies the fault that this has come to pass?
Is it the lack of an opposition party, the lack of a clear ,concise and ever present voice pointing out each and every lie, every corruption? I hope it is because that, at least is correctable.
by
ardee D. (6 articles, 4 quicklinks, 1 diaries, 2377 comments)
on Saturday, February 25, 2006 at 9:43:50 AM
What an excellent article. You surely point out what is happening here and now. We do see the problem but we still do not see the answer. All we are seeing is discoordinated anger and frustration and as we know it is directed at ourselves and each other.
We do not see a strong leader figure on the horizon just more of the same. Even when you do put your faith in someone such as Kerry they let you down without even a kiss.
They do orchestrate all we do in one way or another right down to our voting and even our demonstrating on the street.
I would not want to be a cop with the job of stopping someone from doing something that I believed right and wanted to do myself. But until there is a helping hand I am afraid we are in for a long haul.
For sure they knew just what they were doing when the Homeland Secutity was brought in and no doubt it had been in the making for a long time, right along with the Patriot Act. We are not going to get rid of it overnight and maybe, just maybe when we do get a hold on it there will be safeguards to stop it from ever happening again.
Along with that when push comes to shove there should not be just a slapping of hands for crimes committed. If it is called treason and the acts are treasonous then treat them as such. In their words, to the full extent of the law.
But first are we going to be able to do this the legal way through open and above board elections with each vote being counted or are we going to have to do as out Forefathers and go to the streets and take our country back? In which case those causing all the misery will be handled.
It would make more sense to me fighting to take our country back over fighting to protect corporate interests that are destroying our country.
Nuff said...for now.
Roibert D. Daily
by
Robert D. Daily (7 articles, 12 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 12 comments)
on Saturday, February 25, 2006 at 4:17:54 PM
2 comments
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