Ed Tant nails the Bush goose step march
Tant: Bush administration marching America directly into fascism
| | Story updated at 10:12 PM on Friday, June 9, 2006
Ed
Tant
more Tant columns
We aren't always the good guys and America doesn't always fight for freedom. Sometimes the shadow of the swastika looms over the "land of the free." From Abu Ghraib to Haditha, the Bush administration's ill-conceived and imperialistic invasion of Iraq has proved that the philosopher Voltaire was right when he said, "Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities."
Here at home, the folly of the Iraq war likewise proves that historian Howard Zinn was quite correct when he said, "One certain effect of war is to diminish freedom of expression." From the sadly misnamed "free speech zones" to corral protesters against Bush's policies to the widespread surveillance of phone calls made by Americans, it would seem that despite the prattling of the president it is fascism, not freedom, that is on the march right here in the United States.
Louisiana demagogue Huey Long said in the 1930s that if fascism ever comes to America, it will come wrapped in a red, white and blue package of Americanism. Italian dictator Benito Mussolini called fascism an "illiberal and anti-liberal" rule in which the corporation is king and religion is a tool of the all-powerful state. With the Bush administration's kowtowing to the corporados and genuflecting to the religious right, one doesn't have to look far to see the signs of a police state here in a nation that mouths slogans about freedom, but in reality seems to love freedom only as long as nobody actually uses it.
The horror of Haditha, where U.S. Marines are accused of killing Iraqi civilians and then trying to cover up their crime, is just one more manifestation of the fascistic trends of the Bush crew at home and overseas. Writer Robert Parry, on the Web at consortiumnews.com, calls the Haditha killings "Bush's My Lai," in reference to the hundreds of civilians killed by Army soldiers at a Vietnamese village in 1968.
"Though the number of dead at Haditha is less than one tenth the victims of My Lai," writes Parry, "the scenarios are eerily similar: U.S. troops - fighting a confusing conflict against a shadowy enemy - lash out at a civilian population, killing unarmed men, women and children. If the Marines at Haditha are found guilty of committing the atrocity, they can be expected to receive severe punishment for murder ... Yet, while these Marines may face severe punishment for violating the rules of war, the political leadership back home - up to and including George W. Bush - remains immune from any meaningful accountability."
Just as they did when the massacre at My Lai came to light, militarists in America will continue to make excuses for the war crimes and authoritarian trends of the Bush/Cheney Republican Reich. It was almost laughable on Memorial Day when President Bush told an audience at Arlington National Cemetery that "America has always gone to war reluctantly, because we know the costs of war."
In reality - as opposed to the neocon fantasies of the Bush crew - the Iraq invasion was foisted upon this nation eagerly, not reluctantly, and the true costs of that deadly debacle will be borne upon the backs of American taxpayers for generations yet to come. While then-Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz rosily predicted before the American invasion that Iraq would "finance its own reconstruction," a study released in January that was written by Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz of Columbia University and budget expert Linda Bilmes of Harvard said the real monetary costs of the Iraq war could be from $1 trillion to $2 trillion, counting long-term health care for thousands of wounded troops and the negative impact on the U.S. economy.
While the Iraq war takes its deadly toll in blood and treasure, and freedom is in danger here at home, Bush tries to rally his benighted and bucolic base with calls for constitutional amendments to combat the non-problems of gay marriage and flag burning. Bush's latest ploy might play with the rubes, reactionaries and religious right-wingers in his hard-core political base, but it proves once again that philosopher Bertrand Russell was right when he said that fascist movements everywhere seek "to fascinate fools and muzzle the intelligent, by emotional excitement on the one hand and terrorism on the other."
• Tant has been an Athens columnist since 1974. His work also has appeared in The New York Times, The Progressive, Astronomy magazine and other publications.
Published in the Athens Banner-Herald on 061006
| | Story updated at 10:12 PM on Friday, June 9, 2006
Ed
Tant
more Tant columns
We aren't always the good guys and America doesn't always fight for freedom. Sometimes the shadow of the swastika looms over the "land of the free." From Abu Ghraib to Haditha, the Bush administration's ill-conceived and imperialistic invasion of Iraq has proved that the philosopher Voltaire was right when he said, "Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities."
Here at home, the folly of the Iraq war likewise proves that historian Howard Zinn was quite correct when he said, "One certain effect of war is to diminish freedom of expression." From the sadly misnamed "free speech zones" to corral protesters against Bush's policies to the widespread surveillance of phone calls made by Americans, it would seem that despite the prattling of the president it is fascism, not freedom, that is on the march right here in the United States.
Louisiana demagogue Huey Long said in the 1930s that if fascism ever comes to America, it will come wrapped in a red, white and blue package of Americanism. Italian dictator Benito Mussolini called fascism an "illiberal and anti-liberal" rule in which the corporation is king and religion is a tool of the all-powerful state. With the Bush administration's kowtowing to the corporados and genuflecting to the religious right, one doesn't have to look far to see the signs of a police state here in a nation that mouths slogans about freedom, but in reality seems to love freedom only as long as nobody actually uses it.
The horror of Haditha, where U.S. Marines are accused of killing Iraqi civilians and then trying to cover up their crime, is just one more manifestation of the fascistic trends of the Bush crew at home and overseas. Writer Robert Parry, on the Web at consortiumnews.com, calls the Haditha killings "Bush's My Lai," in reference to the hundreds of civilians killed by Army soldiers at a Vietnamese village in 1968.
"Though the number of dead at Haditha is less than one tenth the victims of My Lai," writes Parry, "the scenarios are eerily similar: U.S. troops - fighting a confusing conflict against a shadowy enemy - lash out at a civilian population, killing unarmed men, women and children. If the Marines at Haditha are found guilty of committing the atrocity, they can be expected to receive severe punishment for murder ... Yet, while these Marines may face severe punishment for violating the rules of war, the political leadership back home - up to and including George W. Bush - remains immune from any meaningful accountability."
Just as they did when the massacre at My Lai came to light, militarists in America will continue to make excuses for the war crimes and authoritarian trends of the Bush/Cheney Republican Reich. It was almost laughable on Memorial Day when President Bush told an audience at Arlington National Cemetery that "America has always gone to war reluctantly, because we know the costs of war."
In reality - as opposed to the neocon fantasies of the Bush crew - the Iraq invasion was foisted upon this nation eagerly, not reluctantly, and the true costs of that deadly debacle will be borne upon the backs of American taxpayers for generations yet to come. While then-Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz rosily predicted before the American invasion that Iraq would "finance its own reconstruction," a study released in January that was written by Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz of Columbia University and budget expert Linda Bilmes of Harvard said the real monetary costs of the Iraq war could be from $1 trillion to $2 trillion, counting long-term health care for thousands of wounded troops and the negative impact on the U.S. economy.
While the Iraq war takes its deadly toll in blood and treasure, and freedom is in danger here at home, Bush tries to rally his benighted and bucolic base with calls for constitutional amendments to combat the non-problems of gay marriage and flag burning. Bush's latest ploy might play with the rubes, reactionaries and religious right-wingers in his hard-core political base, but it proves once again that philosopher Bertrand Russell was right when he said that fascist movements everywhere seek "to fascinate fools and muzzle the intelligent, by emotional excitement on the one hand and terrorism on the other."
• Tant has been an Athens columnist since 1974. His work also has appeared in The New York Times, The Progressive, Astronomy magazine and other publications.
Published in the Athens Banner-Herald on 061006
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