[Peace-discuss] Core Values

[C. G. Estabrook]

	Core Values 
	By Chris Floyd
	02/24/05 
	Moscow Times 

Day in and day out, patriotic American dissidents on both the left and the
right keep shovelling through the bloody muck of the Bush Imperium. The
filth is endless, Augean; Salon.com recently catalogued 34 ongoing major
scandals, equalling or surpassing the depravity of Watergate. Yet still
the patriots bend to the task, tossing up steaming piles of ugly truth
before the public.

And with every loud splattering of fresh Bushflop, there's a flurry of
hope that this time, the dirt will stick; this time, the stench of
corruption will be so overwhelming that the nation's long-somnolent
conscience will be aroused. Yet each time, the rancid slurry just
disappears down the drain: The Bushists tell their butt-covering lies, the
"watchdogs" of the media wag their tails and all is well again in the land
that Gore Vidal so aptly dubbed the United States of Amnesia. No scandal,
no matter how outrageous, ever gains any traction.

But there is a simple reason why patriots on both the right and the left
are stymied: because the center is rotten to its well-wadded,
self-righteous, wilfully ignorant core. We speak here of the nation's
"great and good," pillars of the community and stalwarts of the
established order, the "captains, merchant bankers, eminent men of
letters, the generous patrons of art, the statesmen and the rulers,
distinguished civil servants, chairmen of many committees, industrial
lords and petty contractors," in T.S. Eliot's words -- to which we might
add, as a modern gloss, the highly credentialed academics, extremely
well-remunerated corporate journalists, politically wired churchmen and
the innumerable massagers of public opinion and commercial desire.

It is this center -- which prides itself on being sensible, moderate,
decent and respectable -- that has become morally corrupted beyond
measure, perhaps beyond remedy. Here, where there should be thunderous
denunciations of the Bush regime's rape of American honor -- a litany of
sins that includes aggressive war, the decimation of cities, vile acts of
torture, kidnappings, "renditions," imprisonment without charges,
indefinite detention, assassinations, war profiteering and the exaltation
of presidential power above the reach of law -- there has been only silent
acquiescence, or the rare, decorous, timorous murmur, or, increasingly,
enthusiastic support.

An obscure news story from last week, buried in the back pages -- if noted
at all -- provides a vivid glimpse of the center rot. It was an ordinary
wire piece from Knight-Ridder, standard Washington wonkery about a
bureaucratic turf battle. It dealt with one of the recommendations of the
"9-11 Commission" -- that assemblage of the great and good whose
"independent" investigation of the 2001 terrorist attacks on America
unearthed a vast tangle of criminal negligence and fatal incompetence for
which, miraculously, not a single member of the great and good bore the
least responsibility.

The commission issued a slew of recommendations for upgrading national
security, including the much-ballyhooed creation of a new "Director of
National Intelligence" to oversee the ever-spreading octopus of U.S.
"security organs" -- 15 separate spy agencies at last count (that we know
about). The wisdom of this advice was borne out by George W. Bush's choice
for the post: John Negroponte, the death-squad enabler and atrocity
manager best known for burying evidence of CIA-sponsored murders,
massacres and torture in Central America during the Reagan-Bush I years.
Fresh from not-dissimilar duties in Baghdad, this distinguished civil
servant is now bringing his dark arts to the Homeland -- to general
approval from the stalwarts.

But the sages had another, lesser-known recommendation: consolidating "all
secret U.S. paramilitary operations, whether clandestine or covert" within
the Pentagon. This would make such operations "more robust," the worthies
said. But the CIA objected to having its own secret armies taken away.
After months of negotiation, it was decided last week that the Pentagon
and CIA would keep their separate paramilitary capabilities.

What exactly are these "paramilitary operations" which the commission, the
U.S. Congress and all our stalwarts think we should have more of? As
Knight-Ridder notes, they are actions "conducted by armed units that do
not belong to conventional military formations" -- in other words,
terrorist groups, according to the Bush regime's own definition. Those
designated as terrorists by Bush should not be covered by the Geneva
Conventions, we are told, because they are not part of a "conventional
military formation." They're outlaws, Bush says, fit to be killed or
locked up without charges. Yet of course he commands the largest
collection of such "outlaws" in the world.

And "outlaw" is no metaphorical term here. As Knight-Ridder explains,
specifically "covert" operations are those "in which the U.S. government
wants to be able to deny any involvement" because they "at times violate
international law or the laws of war."

Here we come to the crux of the rot. Not a single Establishment stalwart
involved in the matter -- not Congress, nor the Commission, nor the
President, nor the press -- objected in the least to this horrifying
reality: that the U.S. government routinely violates "international law
and the laws of war" in secret terrorist actions by "unconventional"
forces, including CIA operatives, local proxies and hired killers. It's
simply accepted, across the board, as standard practice. In fact, the only
concern about these admittedly criminal actions -- directed by
unrestricted presidential fiat, with their true ends (Counterterrorism?
Personal enrichment? Political power games? Ideological zealotry?) forever
hidden from public scrutiny -- is how to make them more "robust," more
efficient and more deadly.

The great societal bulwarks that should mitigate the abuse of power have
instead embraced the barbaric ethos of brute force in order to maintain
their own comfort, privilege and self-regard. For them, law has become a
pretty sham and honor is a fiction, while respectability and decency are
fairy tales for fools and children. Truth will never hold where the center
is so murderously corrupted.

Annotations

CIA, Pentagon Reject Recommendation on Paramilitaries Knight-Ridder, Feb.
16, 2005

A Wave of Torture and Murder in Honduras: Did Washington Know? Yes
Baltimore Sun, June 11, 1995

Promoting the Ambassador of Torture Democracy Now, Feb. 18, 2005

History of Guatemala's Death Squads Consortiumnews.com, Jan. 11, 2005

Guatemalan Death Squad Dossier National Security Archives, May 20, 1999

The CIA in Latin America National Security Archives, March 14, 2000

Negroponte's Dark Past The Nation, Feb. 17, 2005

Negroponte's Blind Spots Consortiumnews.com, Feb. 18, 2005

Alberto Gonzales' Tortured Arguments for Reigning Above the Law LA Weekly,
Jan. 14-20, 2005

Torture Treaty Doesn't Bar `Cruel, Inhuman' Tactics, Gonzales Says
Knight-Ridder, Jan. 26, 2005

The Secret World of US Jails The Observer, June 13, 2004

The Torture Memos: A Legal Narrative CounterPunch, Feb. 2, 2005

CIA Takes on Major Military Role: 'We're Killing People! Boston Globe,
Jan. 20, 2002

Reagan and Guatemala's Death Files Consortiumnews.com, May 26, 1999

Death, Lies and Bodywashing Consortiumnews.com, 1996

US Wants to Build Network of Friendly Militias to Fight Terrorism AFP,
August 15, 2004

Pentagon Plan for Global Anti-Terror Army Sydney Morning Herald, Aug. 11,
2004

America's Amnesia on Torture The Progressive, July 2004

U.S. Arming Baathist Militia's to Combat Shiite Cleric Rule Asia Times,
Feb. 15, 2005

Bush's Death Squads Ratical.org, Jan. 31, 2002

Bush Has Widened Authority of CIA to Kill Terrorists New York Times, Dec.
15, 2002

Special Ops Get OK to Initiate Its Own Missions Washington Times, Jan. 8,
2003

Coward's War in Yemen Spiked, Nov. 11, 2002

Drones of Death The Guardian, Nov. 6, 2002

Memo Regarding Presidential Executive Order on Interrogations Federal
Bureau of Investigation, May 22, 2004

Rumsfeld's Dirty Little Secret Center for American Progress, Jan.

Pentagon's Secret Spy Unit Broadens Rumsfeld's Power San Francisco
Chronicle, Jan. 23, 2005

Pentagon Files Reveal More Allegations of Abuse in Iraq Los Angeles Times,
Jan. 25, 2005

America's Death Squads Antiwar.com, Jan. 10, 2005

Gonzales Excludes CIA from Rules on Prisoners New York Times, Jan. 20,
2005

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