The Path Forward

So, I was milling about the internet over my morning coffee looking for some info about the rise of the US Gov't propaganda campaigns. It's (propaganda that is) been integral to the United States as a people and a nation since the country's inception. Recall "Don't tread on me," T.P.'s "Common Sense," slogans like "taxation without representation." Also, the importance B. Franklin's connection if not control of the printed word in the colonies should not be overlooked. Certainly the success of the revolution would have been less certain without effective propaganda. It was after the rise of the Soviet Union that the US Gov't acknowledged the supremacy of and vowed to emulate and out-do the Soviet propaganda machine. It was that decision and successive efforts that put the infrastructure in place for the current taxpayer-funded pro-war journalism that is now being investigated by the few patriots of the Constitution in Congress.

Anyway, that's what I was looking for when I thought to articulate why we need to prosecute the current executive leadership to avoid in the future the kind of malevolent and destructive behavior and policies the current executive has enacted and the current congress has allowed. What's the connection? Well, part of fixing something is dismantling it and throwing out the bad parts. That's what we need to do to with both the Executive branch and the covert branches of our government that work to overthrow foreign governments and undermine the sovereignty of the American people.

To get the whole propaganda thing out of the way, let me just say that propaganda can be good. For example, for the purpose of informing people of some cause for action and the necessary action they should take. The old duck-and-cover, as if that's gonna protect you from fallout, might be such an example. Anti-smoking TV ads like that of truth.org are good examples of positive propaganda campaigns. However, when the purpose is to build paranoia, fear of a fictitious enemy, misinform or otherwise diminish the capacity of the people to make informed, rational decisions, then the propaganda undermines democracy and is the definition of anti-American. No surprise Team W is such a big user of propaganda. The programs that our government is using to subvert our own democracy through misinformation must be rooted out and exposed so that the people are fully aware of how malevolent politicians will misguide them with their own government if allowed. Not that it'll make any difference next time, but it is needed to create new faith in the government now.

The second matter goes to the same end but on a larger scale. It is necessary to prosecute the Bush and gang for their misdeeds to absolve the rest of us for our failure to stop them. This is critical to set a precedent for what happens to leaders who so dramatically overstep the bounds of their office--lying to the press and the public, presenting false arguments for going to war, taking our country to war on false pretenses, killing possibly a million or more foreign nationals on their own soil during an illegal invasion and occupation, amazingly blatant nepotism in the form of no-bid contracts for the Vice President's former Company, pissing away billions of the people's dollars in a fantastically misguided boondoggle designed to profit the president and his cronies. It is also necessary as a means to salvage the image of the US in the world. As much as I believe that we're piling misdeeds upon misdeeds by staying in Iraq, that we are perpetuating a criminal war and that we could and should be spending all those billions of dollars much more wisely, I can't help but feel we have an obligation to the people of Iraq to protect them from the chaos that has besieged their nation (I mean, aside from that for which we're directly responsible). All one foreign national I've asked has assured me the US is under no such obligation, and I find it pretty easy to believe we're doing more harm than good (just look at what the Bushies have done domestically--just imagine if they could get away with murder here), so maybe we should just leave the Iraqi's to deal with the mess we made and stop trying to fix our mess with more of the same. So, we leave. But, in order to (re)establish our position in the world as a nation that is not evil, it’s necessary to demonstrate to the world and also to ourselves that the US does not stand for the kind of international crime that we as a nation have perpetrated against Iraq in the last five years and that we are not so stupid as to believe the lies on lies on lies that the Bushies have showered on us as explanations for US foreign policy. If we fail to at least try those in the Executive Branch and even Congress who dragged us into Iraq on a stack on false evidence then we admit no wrongdoing. If we are to admit no wrongdoing, we as a nation share the guilt of arrogance, contempt for human life and justice; we share the guilt for perpetrating an illegal war against a sovereign nation under false pretenses. Some might think such matters of justice are trivial, but I say, if we don’t have and use the authority to dispense justice in our own land, then we better keep out of Somalia (As if! They don’t have any oil.) or any future Iraq, Kuwait, Yugoslavia or Germany. Justice is not just for the weak. And, we must prove our justice is worthy here at home before it is exported.

It is absolutely critical that we dispense justice to ourselves. This is necessary for the purposes of setting a standard for accountability for our elected leaders/ representatives, absolving the American people of the criminal actions taken by few and supported by no more than half, demonstrating a standard for moral authority in a democratic nation that’s worthy of emulation, and last but not least: disarming those who would use our latest misdeeds as fuel for their hatred of the US. Actually, this is what I thought we should have done after 911. Of course we should have gone into Afghanistan and demonstrated our will and ability to retaliate for the attacks, but the most expedient way to deal with the terrorists, based on why they claimed to be attacking the US, would have been to say, “You’re right. Our bad. We’ll try to avoid doing undermining Middle Eastern governments and replacing their chosen leaders with West-friendly dictators in the future.” Tough on us, we’d have to admit we’re not always right, admit that we do have a program for subverting governments that don’t do what we want, and maybe even mean it when we say we’ll stop overthrowing the governments of other sovereign nations (well, except Venezuela, maybe).

Think of all the billions...or is it a Trillion…that have been squandered on securing our oil supply, when we could have spent that money (perhaps less) creating a whole new energy and transportation infrastructure. Instead, we blew it running a global war on an idea—an idea that may have some pretty good justification. Instead, we’ve done nothing but illustrate just how justified their actions were, and the growth of Al-Queda since 2003 is the obvious result.

Anyway, that’s why I think we need to prosecute the fuckheads in Washington who’ve been running amok these last seven years. The tie to domestic propaganda is double. The use of domestic propaganda—and this was biased misinformation, not positive in any way (except to Halliburton and Blackwater)—was a crucial piece of the Executive’s program to mislead the US into an illegal war. And, the continuation of domestic propaganda is a moral and legal parallel to the failure to prosecute the culprits responsible for the Iraq fiasco.

Granted, as optimistic as my idealism leads me to be, my pessimistic/ realistic side tells me that we won’t leave Iraq. We’ll be there for another hundred years. Bush and Cheney will never see justice. They’ll continue to profit directly and indirectly from their actions in the White House, and their cronies will have the money and the political machinery to continue to misguide our country right down the tubes for generations to come.