Homeland Security

[hiredgun]

This is a very long read, but I found it eye-opening. If you're not going to read through to the end though (including the footnotes), don't bother. Or at least take a look at the end.

----------------------------------------------

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.

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.

When an aide brought him word that the nation's most prestigious building
had been destroyed **, he verified it was the terrorist who had struck and
then called a press conference.

"You are now witnessing the beginning of a great epoch in history," he
proclaimed, standing in front of the ruin, surrounded by national media.
"This," 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 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.
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 law
enforcement 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.

Shortly 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 national pride among his countrymen, so, instead of referring to the
country by its name, he began to refer to it as "The Homeland." 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.

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.

His PR people 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.

Soon after 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
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 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. 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.

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, even though its connection with the terrorist who had
destroyed the nation's most important building was tenuous at best. ******
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. By the time of his successful and brief war, he was
the most beloved and popular leader in the history of the nation. Hailed
around the world, he was later Time magazine's "Man Of The Year."

To deal with those who dissented from his policies, at the advice of his
politically savvy advisors, he and his allies 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", 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 "unpatriotic" 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" 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
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 and Middle Easterners; 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, the leader invaded another country; the nation was now
fully at war, and all internal dissent was suppressed in the name of
national security. The country had developed a new type of warfare which
produced a highly desirable "shock and awe" among the nation's leaders.
********


Notes below.

* Adolph Hitler
** Firebombing of the German Parliament (Reichstag), February 27, 1933
*** Jews
**** "Decree on the Protection of People and State"
***** Office for the Security of the Homeland, (Reichssicherheitshauptamt)
and its SchutzStaffel, known by it's initials: SS.
****** Austria
******* Fascism 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. (American Heritage
Dictionary)
******** Blitzkrieg. See the 1996 book "Shock And Awe" published by the
National Defense University Press.

Names, dates, and German words have been deleted from this article. The
original, unedited version was published on Sunday, March 16, 2003 by
CommonDreams.org Go there to see the more informative original.

When Democracy Failed: The Warnings of History
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.

[Nad Adam]

Now this could neeeeevvvveeer happen today.

[zmbabwe]

Now I may disaggree with Bush politically, but comparing him to Hitler is somewhat of a stretch. But the point is duly noted and I do see several connections in the article. That was a great post.

[Quadraton]

Seig Heil!

While I don't think that Bush has grand dreams of assimilating the entire planet like Hitler did, there are <a href="http://www.newamericancentury.org">people</a> who do.

[MrSmashy]

Amusing.

[Lebell]

Anyone who reaches for a "Hitler" analogy in all this is sick, IMHO.

[hiredgun]

At least admit that if you read it without the footnotes you'd think it referred to today.

Obviously our current situation is not an exact parallel to Nazi Germany, and can never be; but the similarities are frightening. I think that the tides of gradual change are pulling us in the wrong direction, towards a Nazi-esque police state, not away from it.

[Lebell]

And how many said that Iraq would be another "Afghanistan" or another "Viet Nam"?

I agree that history should be paid attention to, but I think this is a reach.

[Valthonis]

Awesome post. Very disturbing.

[hotzot]

homeland security is a load.