Wil. E. Coyote, the American People, and Where Things Are At Now

To explain this point in very brief form: One of the people I cite in my book is a DoD think tank analyst named Nathan Frier. Frier argued in 2008, referring to upcoming catastrophes such as a 9/11 terrorist attack or environmental calamity:  

The likeliest and most dangerous future shocks will be unconventional" Their origin is most likely to be in irregular, catastrophic, and hybrid threats of "purpose' (emerging from hostile design) or threats of "context' (emerging in the absence of hostile purpose or design). Of the two, the latter is both the least understood and the most dangerous. (p. 116)

Dennis Milligan, Arkansas GOP Chairman, stated on June 3, 2007:

" [A]ll we need is some attacks on American soil like we had on [9/11], and the naysayers will come around very quickly to appreciate not only the commitment for President Bush, but the sacrifice that has been made by men and women to protect this country. "

Lt. Col. Doug Delaney, War Studies Program Chair, Royal Military College in Kingston, Ontario, paraphrased by Toronto Star reporter Andrew Chung in the first sentence, on July 8, 2007: " [T]he key to bolstering Western resolve is another terrorist attack like 9/11 or the London transit bombings of two years ago. "If nothing happens, it will be harder still to say this is necessary.'"

In other words, in order to continue the security state, in which all of these new measures are now the norm, it is necessary for successful and aborted terrorist incidents to occur periodically. If they do not, then the justification for these measures will go away. For the GWOT to continue, therefore, the GWOT must suffer "failures." If anti-state terrorist incidents disappear completely, then the GWOT's rationale disappears and all of these measures will no longer enjoy public support or acquiescence. This helps to explain why the GWOT uses terror. You know that line in Avatar: We will fight terror with terror? I used that line in the title of an essay that formed the nucleus of the eventual Chapter Four of my new book. I don't think that Avatar's director James Cameron stole it from my essay that came out before his movie; I think we just both came to the same conclusions independently.

Put another way, the fundamental logic of the GWOT is that it has a stake in the persistence of anti-state terrorism and it has an interest in continuing to use state terror that by its very indiscriminate nature continues to inflame people against the U.S. and make some of them want to commit acts of terrorism or at least be sympathetic to those who do. That our government is torturing and killing innocent men, women and children in their GWOT is not a mistake or oversight. It's actually logical as a policy. State terror is supposed to harm people indiscriminately. That is the source of its efficacy, as far as it goes: you are supposed to be so afraid that you will be the next capriciously chosen victim of state terror that you will comply without question. But state terror's targeting of innocents and lack of care about innocents also has the result of enflaming the populace against you. I compare it in the book to pouring gasoline on a raging fire in an alleged attempt to drown the fire.

If you think about the underlying logic of the GWOT and its self-reinforcing nature, this means that any unscrupulous individual at many different possible tiers in the hierarchy of government and the corporate world can now simply look the other way when they detect a terrorist incident being hatched, allow that incident to go forward at least part way, or lacking that, engineer an incident themselves by claiming that so and so was planning to set off a "dirty bomb" as Jose Padilla was accused of (an accusation that Paul Wolfowitz shortly after Padilla's arrest admitted was not based on any facts) and use that arrest to justify the ongoing need for the GWOT. Jose Padilla, by the way, was driven mad by their utter isolation of him from others. His attorney described him as akin to a piece of furniture even before the government finally put him on trial and scared the jurors into convicting him.

No one who wants to be taken seriously in Washington dares raise any questions about GWOT's underlying logic. Even if some individual politician wanted to, such as someone like Rep. Dennis Kucinich, he would be censored from saying it and if he did try to say it anyway, he'd be effectively banished from being given committee assignments of any importance, sidelined even more than he is now by the party leadership, and find it even harder than he does now to get any media attention.

Another indication of the underlying fraud that the GWOT is is the fact that the Bush regime was spying on all of our electronic communications just weeks after taking office, in February of 2001, seven months before 9/11. They were doing so because the real reason for the dramatic and radical changes to the nature of governance and the demolition of the rule of law is not anti-state terrorism and not 9/11 but a shift in the nature of the governance in neoliberal regimes.

The government's various definitions of terrorism are now so broad that they can be used against anyone for anything. The government merely calling someone a terrorist or someone who supports terrorists is now enough to get someone removed from office and under lock and key. Just being a whistleblower like Julian Assange can lead to pundits and public officials explicitly calling for your assassination. Some people think that Obama is using these expanded executive powers - which he has increased over what Bush used - against only really bad people. But what people who support this don't realize is that even if Obama were using it only against bad guys, the precedent that a president can do this on his or her own say so means that any future occupant of the White House now can do this against their political enemies. Nixon got nearly impeached and driven in disgrace from office for much less. If Nixon were alive today he would be considered liberal and would be to the left of Obama.

We are now back to the period of the rule of kings, before Magna Carta, where the law was what the King said it was. Indeed, this is how Condi Rice put it about Bush: If the president does it, it's not illegal. Law Professor (bka war criminal) John Yoo testified before Congress several years ago that if the president thinks he must, then he can order that the testicles of s small boy be crushed to get his father to talk to interrogators. According to Yoo it all turns on why the president is doing it, not what he does.

Most people are unaware of these momentous shifts. It's like those cartoon scenes where Wile E. Coyote is chasing the Road Runner and he runs off the cliff and he is running in thin air for a while still parallel to the ground before he looks down and sees that he's not on the ground anymore and then, finally, plummets to earth. Most Americans don't realize that the ground has been cut out from under them and they're still running in mid-air.            

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