What does it mean to live in a politically participatory society? That the populace is allowed to choose those that represent them and then, having done so, forfeit their right to know what those elected to office, and those they appoint to numerous positions, do or advocate in secret? There are many – perhaps a majority – that will disagree with the following assertion: national security does not override the right of a people to know what is being done by those in power, supposedly in their name, supposedly in their interest. To claim as much is to support the creation of two different entities – that which is created by the democratic façade and that which exists after the show of it concludes. There are dozens of arguments to the contrary that claim such an assertion devoid of the complexities that one must take into consideration before such a pronouncement is made. To address them all in a Facebook update would be pointless given that such an update would be colossal in scope – in truth, more akin to a doctoral dissertation or literary work. That said, if you are one of the many that do disagree, you might want to start with Chalmers Johnson’s “Sorrows Of Empire” as a primer and work your way into other works by individuals that served within the ghost governments of supposedly transparent nations and have written works that possess substantiated evidence of the dangers prevalent within what is perceived by most as the largely unblemished prosecution of the democratic model. Lost in the back pages are the indicators of our blindness. For example, while the White House claimed that no sides are being taken in the ongoing unrest in Egypt that saw the removal of President Mohamed Morsi by the military (and the recent killing of over 100 protesters by Cairo police) the reality is that the State Department has channeled funds through its democracy assistance initiative to bankroll various anti-Mosri groups and individuals, acts that not only violate Egyptian law but may also constitute the illegal use of American taxpayer revenue to fund foreign politicians and subversive groups. Unfortunately, the likelihood that the issue will be seriously addressed on the Hill is scant given that US interests dictate that a pro-Western Egyptian regime is, no matter the actions taken to help ensure it, crucial to US interests in the region. Arab Spring or not, were Mubarak still in power the United States, nor any other major Western power, would cry foul of his regime’s abuses, just as they failed to do prior to his removal despite the fact that the deliverance of the democratic has been the go to justification for acts of interference in the greater region since 9/11. There are a lot of ways to summarize it, and there are many who labour under the wholly misguided belief that the influencing of foreign governments is a necessity with regards to national security. In my opinion, it’s playing God - were God the sort of individual that was more concerned with the security of highly lucrative arms agreements and the maintenance of foreign governments that rely on them to maintain an imbalance of power to ensure their political dominance and therefore buoy foreign regional interests. And so Western business enjoys free reign, regimes, as if heroin addicts, become addictive customers to the power provided them to maintain control, and the people – well, the people don’t really factor into it. Until, that is, they decide to do something about it. And if their preferred method of transformation is to demand a democratic government that is devoid of foreign influence and corruption – well, that would be where we throw them under the bus despite the fact that we champion the democratic as the peak of human political achievement. The list of our meddling since the end of the Second World War is so extensive, and so hypocritical, that to go through it all minimally would take the better part of a week. Of course, we condemned others for doing it, and even used them as an excuse for our actions, but the fact remains that our blackened interests have been packaged and sold to us as necessities of security, not hegemony or hubris, both of which played far greater roles. The perception that national security trumps even our most fundamental rights is an illusion crafted so carefully that it is almost impossible to confront, it’s that big of a lie - and you know what Goebbels said about big lies. If you know anything about Operation AJAX, and not simply what contrary history books claim, the reality is that had Mohammad Mosaddegh not been removed from power in 1953, Iran would probably be a democracy today. To safeguard British and American petroleum interests at the time, Iran was transformed and began a journey down a road that could have been very different had we not played God, had we not claimed it in the interest of national security and cast Mosaddegh a Communist, which he wasn’t. Unfortunately, in 1953, the mere mention of that word was enough to justify nuking the moon – we were that hysterical. Of course, that’s precisely what was required, because it allowed for a lot of very terrible things to be accomplished, actions that reverberate to this very day from Central and South America to South East Asia, from Africa to the Middle East. If the proverbial “they” hate us for our freedoms, it may only be because we denied many of them theirs. Freedom, despite what you’ve heard, isn’t universal in its translation. It takes into account a lot of different variables. A lot of Americans, for example, believe that the United States was founded as a Christian nation. Further, some of them would even go so far as to say that Christian doctrine should influence the legal and political landscape. Of course, the United States was founded as a secular nation, but that hasn’t deterred many from openly dismissing that reality. Ironically, were Muslims to claim the same thing, those very Christian fundamentalists would immediately cry foul, claiming the creation of an Islamic theocracy devoid of true democratic ambitions. Ignorance, like freedom, takes into account a lot of different variables, most of which are predicated on fear. Having said that, what I’d like to know is when someone is going to frame it as it should have been framed in the first place – “they hate us for our ignorance”. By “they” I’m not referring to a handful of terrorists, but anyone, in any nation, that is truly concerned about the degradation of reason over the last decade and its implications on a global scale. Because if you grab a map and a box of pins and start marking those places in which conflict is currently enjoying a triumphant Broadway like run, chances are that you’re going to run out of pins. Fear and ignorance, and those that are willing to capitalize on them while painting it all as anything other than what it truly is, are the true enemy. If there ever was a “war on terror” it has long since been transformed into a “war on reason”, though none dare admit it as we would soon fine the finger we so enjoy pointing at others pointing at ourselves. When it comes to the actions of individuals like Edward Snowden and Bradley Manning, the first thing we are presented is the damage caused national security. The reason is because so many of us have been programmed to immediately defend its sanctity rather than seriously question the actions of secretive government agencies that exist because the citizenry allows them to. Make absolutely no mistake about that last sentence – the national security construct of any nation that claims itself “free”, including its intelligence community and the covert apparatuses controlled by either, exist at the behest of the people. If they do not, then it is impossible to claim the existence of freedom, let alone the democratic. For if a people have no power over the defense establishment then the requisite of public participation in the formation of government is rendered a fallacious exhibition of traditionalism rather than a demonstration of inherent power. One of the primary obstacles inherent within the system is the fact that the democratic has always been countermanded by the inherency of the plutocratic. That said, an established state of diminished expectation with regards to public authority has only helped perpetuate the myth that the less a people know, the better off they are. For all the world’s ideologies, be they malignant or benign, one truth stands above all others. The concept of freedom is politically and ideologically fluid, it is not, nor has it ever been, an unalterable notion. Kierkegaard once opined - “people demand freedom of speech as a compensation for the freedom of thought which they seldom use.” Never has that been more true than now.
Posted on: Mon, 29 Jul 2013 17:14:03 +0000
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