[Peace-discuss] From this week's AWARE ON THE AIR

[C. G. Estabrook]

Amidst a storm of revelations about its illegal activities, the Obama administration this week made its most disgraceful announcement yet about their war-making - namely, that they plan to continue killing people indefinitely - and literally around the world, including a global assassination program and twenty more years of war in Afghanistan.

It became clear this week, if it wasn't already, that the Obama administration had 

~ (a) violated the first amendment (which forbids the government to interfere with the freedom of the press) in the AP and Wikileaks cases; 

~ (b) violated the fourth amendment (which bans unreasonable search and seizure by the government) in regard to its tax records of its opponents; and 

~ (c) violated the War Powers Act and Article I, (Section 8, Clause 11) of the Constitution by conducting secret war through Benghazi, Libya. 

Obama of course has already killed as many as 5,000 people through drone strikes and his global assassination program, including American citizens and at least 200 children, and provided for indefinite detention without trial in violation of the 5th and 6th amendments (which provide for due process and speedy and public trials); and he's continued the Bush rendition and torture programs in violation of international law and the 8th amendment, forbidding the government to practice cruel punishments.

Obama's problem is the American people, who don't want more war and are suffering from the administration's economic policies. Politicians, bankers and corporations do want war, so it's clear whom Obama is working for. 

The American corporate and financial elite, pursuing a deeply unpopular policy at home and abroad, are acting in contradiction to democracy - so they have to control it. 

"Two basic factors underlie the destruction of American democracy: the unprecedented concentration of wealth in the hands of a tiny fraction of the population and the unending expansion of American imperialism abroad." 

But this system is notably unstable, because it relies on presidential rule. At the Philadelphia convention that drew up the US Constitution in the summer of 1787, there was only one delegate who suggested giving the chief executive the power to take offensive military action - a man called Pierce Butler, from South Carolina. Elbridge Gerry, a delegate from Massachusetts, summed up the views of the other delegates by saying that he "never expected to hear in a republic a motion to empower the Executive alone to declare war." George Mason, Thomas Jefferson, and others voiced similar sentiments.

Obama has to work very hard to manufacture consent for his war, principally among the political class, the 20% of the population who think their views matter to the government. 80% of the population tell pollsters that that they don't think their views make any difference to what the government does. If they did, they say, we'd have jobs…

Meanwhile Obama concentrates his illegalities in his persecution of one brave and diffident dissident, Bradley Manning, who's subject to the most extensive espionage trial in US history - because he revealed the crimes and cynicism of America's murderous war in the Mideast (Look up "Collateral Murder", the video he released). Obama is trying to make an example of Manning in his unprecedented attack on informing the American people about his murderous policies, in order to shut down independent revelations on the subject.

AWARE ON THE AIR joins many other Americans in trying to frustrate that goal.