Thursday, June 01, 2006

The War Paradigm

Check out Sidney Blumenthal's athoritative and quietly terrifying description of The War Paradigm, the White House philosophy of unlimited power for the President during war time and a war on terror designed to never end. Remember as you read it that Blumenthal was White House Chief Counsel. This is a guy with high level sources.

One particularly chilling passage:
They fervently believe that the Constitution is fatally flawed and must be severely circumscribed. The Bush administration's "holy grail," another phrase officials use in private, is to remove suspects' rights to due process, speedy trial and exculpatory evidence. The war paradigm, which they contrast with a caricatured "law enforcement paradigm," is to be constantly strengthened to conduct a permanent war against terror, which can never be finally defeated. There is no exit strategy from emergency.
This isn't a cranky socialist blogger like, you know, me, this is a consummate Washington insider describing an administration just a hop, skip and a jump away from actual fascism. Mussolini said fascism should be more properly called 'corporatism' as it was actually a tightly knit alliance between the state and the corporations. Sound at all familiar?

At what point did the Americans cross the line from exasperating and unsettling to absolutely terrifying?

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Man, this is really scary - but why am I not surprised?

Anonymous said...

At what point did they cross the line?

It was November, 2000 - when Al Gore decided to give up on his country, instead of fighting with everything he and the Dems had (at that time it was considerably more) to ensure that the ELECTED President moved into the White House.

And the American people watched.

That's when they went from merely annoying to absolutely terrifying.

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