[Vision2020] Iraq War: where are we going?
Bill London
london@moscow.com
Sat, 22 Mar 2003 10:31:26 -0800
Ever since I first heard the use of the word "Homeland" to label this
nation and its desire for security, I've wondered about the historic
parallel to another Homeland and another war.....here's an insightful
discussion of that comparison...
BL
Published on Sunday, March 16, 2003 by CommonDreams.org
When Democracy Failed: The Warnings of
History
by Thom Hartmann
The 70th anniversary wasn't noticed in the United
States, and was barely reported in the
corporate media. But the Germans remembered well that
fateful day seventy years ago -
February 27, 1933. They commemorated the anniversary by
joining in demonstrations for
peace that mobilized citizens all across the world.
It started when the government, in the midst of a
worldwide economic crisis, received
reports of an imminent terrorist attack. A foreign
ideologue had launched feeble attacks on
a few famous buildings, but the media largely ignored
his relatively small efforts. The
intelligence services knew, however, that the odds were
he would eventually succeed.
(Historians are still arguing whether or not rogue
elements in the intelligence service helped
the terrorist; the most recent research implies they did
not.)
But the warnings of investigators were ignored at the
highest levels, in part because the
government was distracted; the man who claimed to be the
nation's leader had not been
elected by a majority vote and the majority of citizens
claimed he had no right to the
powers he coveted. He was a simpleton, some said, a
cartoon character of a man who saw
things in black-and-white terms and didn't have the
intellect to understand the subtleties of
running a nation in a complex and internationalist
world. His coarse use of language -
reflecting his political roots in a southernmost state -
and his simplistic and
often-inflammatory nationalistic rhetoric offended the
aristocrats, foreign leaders, and the
well-educated elite in the government and media. And, as
a young man, he'd joined a
secret society with an occult-sounding name and bizarre
initiation rituals that involved
skulls and human bones.
Nonetheless, he knew the terrorist was going to strike
(although he didn't know where or
when), and he had already considered his response. When
an aide brought him word that
the nation's most prestigious building was ablaze, he
verified it was the terrorist who had
struck and then rushed to the scene and called a press
conference.
"You are now witnessing the beginning of a great epoch
in history," he proclaimed, standing
in front of the burned-out building, surrounded by
national media. "This fire," he said, his
voice trembling with emotion, "is the beginning." He
used the occasion - "a sign from God,"
he called it - to declare an all-out war on terrorism
and its ideological sponsors, a people,
he said, who traced their origins to the Middle East and
found motivation for their evil deeds
in their religion.
Two weeks later, the first detention center for
terrorists was built in Oranianberg to hold the
first suspected allies of the infamous terrorist. In a
national outburst of patriotism, the
leader's flag was everywhere, even printed large in
newspapers suitable for window display.
Within four weeks of the terrorist attack, the nation's
now-popular leader had pushed
through legislation - in the name of combating terrorism
and fighting the philosophy he said
spawned it - that suspended constitutional guarantees of
free speech, privacy, and habeas
corpus. Police could now intercept mail and wiretap
phones; suspected terrorists could be
imprisoned without specific charges and without access
to their lawyers; police could
sneak into people's homes without warrants if the cases
involved terrorism.
To get his patriotic "Decree on the Protection of People
and State" passed over the
objections of concerned legislators and civil
libertarians, he agreed to put a 4-year sunset
provision on it: if the national emergency provoked by
the terrorist attack was over by then,
the freedoms and rights would be returned to the people,
and the police agencies would be
re-restrained. Legislators would later say they hadn't
had time to read the bill before voting
on it.
Immediately after passage of the anti-terrorism act, his
federal police agencies stepped up
their program of arresting suspicious persons and
holding them without access to lawyers
or courts. In the first year only a few hundred were
interred, and those who objected were
largely ignored by the mainstream press, which was
afraid to offend and thus lose access
to a leader with such high popularity ratings. Citizens
who protested the leader in public -
and there were many - quickly found themselves
confronting the newly empowered police's
batons, gas, and jail cells, or fenced off in protest
zones safely out of earshot of the leader's
public speeches. (In the meantime, he was taking almost
daily lessons in public speaking,
learning to control his tonality, gestures, and facial
expressions. He became a very
competent orator.)
Within the first months after that terrorist attack, at
the suggestion of a political advisor, he
brought a formerly obscure word into common usage. He
wanted to stir a "racial pride"
among his countrymen, so, instead of referring to the
nation by its name, he began to refer
to it as "The Homeland," a phrase publicly promoted in
the introduction to a 1934 speech
recorded in Leni Riefenstahl's famous propaganda movie
"Triumph Of The Will." As hoped,
people's hearts swelled with pride, and the beginning of
an us-versus-them mentality was
sewn. Our land was "the" homeland, citizens thought: all
others were simply foreign lands.
We are the "true people," he suggested, the only ones
worthy of our nation's concern; if
bombs fall on others, or human rights are violated in
other nations and it makes our lives
better, it's of little concern to us.
Playing on this new nationalism, and exploiting a
disagreement with the French over his
increasing militarism, he argued that any international
body that didn't act first and foremost
in the best interest of his own nation was neither
relevant nor useful. He thus withdrew his
country from the League Of Nations in October, 1933, and
then negotiated a separate naval
armaments agreement with Anthony Eden of The United
Kingdom to create a worldwide
military ruling elite.
His propaganda minister orchestrated a campaign to
ensure the people that he was a
deeply religious man and that his motivations were
rooted in Christianity. He even
proclaimed the need for a revival of the Christian faith
across his nation, what he called a
"New Christianity." Every man in his rapidly growing
army wore a belt buckle that declared
"Gott Mit Uns" - God Is With Us - and most of them
fervently believed it was true.
Within a year of the terrorist attack, the nation's
leader determined that the various local
police and federal agencies around the nation were
lacking the clear communication and
overall coordinated administration necessary to deal
with the terrorist threat facing the
nation, particularly those citizens who were of Middle
Eastern ancestry and thus probably
terrorist and communist sympathizers, and various
troublesome "intellectuals" and
"liberals." He proposed a single new national agency to
protect the security of the
homeland, consolidating the actions of dozens of
previously independent police, border, and
investigative agencies under a single leader.
He appointed one of his most trusted associates to be
leader of this new agency, the
Central Security Office for the homeland, and gave it a
role in the government equal to the
other major departments.
His assistant who dealt with the press noted that, since
the terrorist attack, "Radio and
press are at out disposal." Those voices questioning the
legitimacy of their nation's leader,
or raising questions about his checkered past, had by
now faded from the public's
recollection as his central security office began
advertising a program encouraging people
to phone in tips about suspicious neighbors. This
program was so successful that the
names of some of the people "denounced" were soon being
broadcast on radio stations.
Those denounced often included opposition politicians
and celebrities who dared speak out
- a favorite target of his regime and the media he now
controlled through intimidation and
ownership by corporate allies.
To consolidate his power, he concluded that government
alone wasn't enough. He reached
out to industry and forged an alliance, bringing former
executives of the nation's largest
corporations into high government positions. A flood of
government money poured into
corporate coffers to fight the war against the Middle
Eastern ancestry terrorists lurking
within the homeland, and to prepare for wars overseas.
He encouraged large corporations
friendly to him to acquire media outlets and other
industrial concerns across the nation,
particularly those previously owned by suspicious people
of Middle Eastern ancestry. He
built powerful alliances with industry; one corporate
ally got the lucrative contract worth
millions to build the first large-scale detention center
for enemies of the state. Soon more
would follow. Industry flourished.
But after an interval of peace following the terrorist
attack, voices of dissent again arose
within and without the government. Students had started
an active program opposing him
(later known as the White Rose Society), and leaders of
nearby nations were speaking out
against his bellicose rhetoric. He needed a diversion,
something to direct people away from
the corporate cronyism being exposed in his own
government, questions of his possibly
illegitimate rise to power, and the oft-voiced concerns
of civil libertarians about the people
being held in detention without due process or access to
attorneys or family.
With his number two man - a master at manipulating the
media - he began a campaign to
convince the people of the nation that a small, limited
war was necessary. Another nation
was harboring many of the suspicious Middle Eastern
people, and even though its
connection with the terrorist who had set afire the
nation's most important building was
tenuous at best, it held resources their nation badly
needed if they were to have room to live
and maintain their prosperity. He called a press
conference and publicly delivered an
ultimatum to the leader of the other nation, provoking
an international uproar. He claimed
the right to strike preemptively in self-defense, and
nations across Europe - at first -
denounced him for it, pointing out that it was a
doctrine only claimed in the past by nations
seeking worldwide empire, like Caesar's Rome or
Alexander's Greece.
It took a few months, and intense international debate
and lobbying with European nations,
but, after he personally met with the leader of the
United Kingdom, finally a deal was
struck. After the military action began, Prime Minister
Neville Chamberlain told the nervous
British people that giving in to this leader's new
first-strike doctrine would bring "peace for
our time." Thus Hitler annexed Austria in a lightning
move, riding a wave of popular support
as leaders so often do in times of war. The Austrian
government was unseated and
replaced by a new leadership friendly to Germany, and
German corporations began to take
over Austrian resources.
In a speech responding to critics of the invasion,
Hitler said, "Certain foreign newspapers
have said that we fell on Austria with brutal methods. I
can only say; even in death they
cannot stop lying. I have in the course of my political
struggle won much love from my
people, but when I crossed the former frontier [into
Austria] there met me such a stream of
love as I have never experienced. Not as tyrants have we
come, but as liberators."
To deal with those who dissented from his policies, at
the advice of his politically savvy
advisors, he and his handmaidens in the press began a
campaign to equate him and his
policies with patriotism and the nation itself. National
unity was essential, they said, to
ensure that the terrorists or their sponsors didn't
think they'd succeeded in splitting the
nation or weakening its will. In times of war, they
said, there could be only "one people, one
nation, and one commander-in-chief" ("Ein Volk, ein
Reich, ein Fuhrer"), and so his
advocates in the media began a nationwide campaign
charging that critics of his policies
were attacking the nation itself. Those questioning him
were labeled "anti-German" or "not
good Germans," and it was suggested they were aiding the
enemies of the state by failing
in the patriotic necessity of supporting the nation's
valiant men in uniform. It was one of his
most effective ways to stifle dissent and pit
wage-earning people (from whom most of the
army came) against the "intellectuals and liberals" who
were critical of his policies.
Nonetheless, once the "small war" annexation of Austria
was successfully and quickly
completed, and peace returned, voices of opposition were
again raised in the Homeland.
The almost-daily release of news bulletins about the
dangers of terrorist communist cells
wasn't enough to rouse the populace and totally suppress
dissent. A full-out war was
necessary to divert public attention from the growing
rumbles within the country about
disappearing dissidents; violence against liberals,
Jews, and union leaders; and the
epidemic of crony capitalism that was producing empires
of wealth in the corporate sector
but threatening the middle class's way of life.
A year later, to the week, Hitler invaded
Czechoslovakia; the nation was now fully at war,
and all internal dissent was suppressed in the name of
national security. It was the end of
Germany's first experiment with democracy.
As we conclude this review of history, there are a few
milestones worth remembering.
February 27, 2003, was the 70th anniversary of Dutch
terrorist Marinus van der Lubbe's
successful firebombing of the German Parliament
(Reichstag) building, the terrorist act that
catapulted Hitler to legitimacy and reshaped the German
constitution. By the time of his
successful and brief action to seize Austria, in which
almost no German blood was shed,
Hitler was the most beloved and popular leader in the
history of his nation. Hailed around
the world, he was later Time magazine's "Man Of The
Year."
Most Americans remember his office for the security of
the homeland, known as the
Reichssicherheitshauptamt and its SchutzStaffel, simply
by its most famous agency's
initials: the SS.
We also remember that the Germans developed a new form
of highly violent warfare they
named "lightning war" or blitzkrieg, which, while
generating devastating civilian losses, also
produced a highly desirable "shock and awe" among the
nation's leadership according to
the authors of the 1996 book "Shock And Awe" published
by the National Defense
University Press.
Reflecting on that time, The American Heritage
Dictionary (Houghton Mifflin Company,
1983) left us this definition of the form of government
the German democracy had become
through Hitler's close alliance with the largest German
corporations and his policy of using
war as a tool to keep power: "fas-cism (fbsh'iz'em) n. A
system of government that
exercises a dictatorship of the extreme right, typically
through the merging of state and
business leadership, together with belligerent
nationalism."
Today, as we face financial and political crises, it's
useful to remember that the ravages of
the Great Depression hit Germany and the United States
alike. Through the 1930s,
however, Hitler and Roosevelt chose very different
courses to bring their nations back to
power and prosperity.
Germany's response was to use government to empower
corporations and reward the
society's richest individuals, privatize much of the
commons, stifle dissent, strip people of
constitutional rights, and create an illusion of
prosperity through continual and
ever-expanding war. America passed minimum wage laws to
raise the middle class,
enforced anti-trust laws to diminish the power of
corporations, increased taxes on
corporations and the wealthiest individuals, created
Social Security, and became the
employer of last resort through programs to build
national infrastructure, promote the arts,
and replant forests.
To the extent that our Constitution is still intact, the
choice is again ours.
Thom Hartmann lived and worked in Germany during the
1980s, and is the author of over a
dozen books, including "Unequal Protection" and "The
Last Hours of Ancient Sunlight."
This article is copyright by Thom Hartmann, but
permission is granted for reprint in print,
email, blog, or web media so long as this credit is
attached.