George Bush doesn’t say it and the media don’t ask it. Bush claims to desire to protect America from ‘terrism’ (his pronunciation). But he goes about it in a strange way, by creating ‘terrism’ faster than he eliminates it, while simultaneously profiting from the voluntary, unnecessary, and often preemptive wars he created in support of his financial investments in the armaments industry. Bombs, bullets and petroleum have all yielded fantastic returns on investment during the Bush Administration, and it is no coincidence that the major figures in the Administration tend to have come from executive positions within those industries.
But what about protecting America from larger threats whose defeat or mitigation is not perceived as profitable to the Bush insiders? For instance, it is increasingly understood that the threat to America from global warming is a threat of orders of magnitude greater than that of terrorism. Global warming is a potential threat to life itself on this planet. It threatens over decades to come to totally eliminate swaths of coastal American real estate of incalculable value. Global warming threatens American agriculture, as we now know it. Global warming threatens bio-diversity. But fighting global warming offers no profit opportunities to the Bush Administration, and obfuscates from their agenda. So the larger threat is ignored while the profitable threat is pursued with diligence despite its deep, painful costs, not only to victims in the community of nations we war against, but ultimately to the American people.
Bush claims that protecting America from terrorism requires de facto torture, and he compares captured terrorists with the possible capture of uniformed American soldiers. But Bush fails to mention that America has its own non-uniformed soldiers that could be captured by our enemies. We have CIA people and hired mercenaries working for Blackwater and other private security firms that could be captured and tortured and who would benefit from anti-torture conventions. America even has military operatives in Special Forces who operate routinely out of uniform. Are they to be considered as terrorists by other nations if they are caught and captured? Interestingly, the American public has been led to believe that if America’s own spies and undercover military operatives are captured, their service to the country is disavowed and they can expect to receive no supports from our government whatsoever. If this is true, and if America continues to fight non-uniformed terrorists from non-state "actors" with our own non-uniformed terrorists acting without the support of the American state, what makes us better or different from those we claim to oppose and to despise? And why does the news media never consider these problems with America’s program of "self-protection"?
The truth is that we are witnessing a charade, a power grab that has little to do with freedom, little to do with democracy, and little to do with protecting America. America’s elite is grabbing for wealth and control of planetary resources in a final spasm of greed, knowing that the current American way of life is unsustainable and that the America we claim to be protecting will inevitably be replaced with a lesser power in the foreseeable future. Instead of protecting America, our President and his minions are protecting their own investments.
And the media misses it all by looking at the trees and failing to see the forest.
Do you feel protected from real threats to your life and well-being?
