How America Was Lost: Without Accountable Government There is No Civil Liberty and No Democracy
“No
legal issue arises when the United States responds to a challenge to
its power, position, and prestige.” Dean Acheson , 1962, speaking to
the American Society of International Law.
Dean
Acheson declared 51 years ago that power, position, and prestige are
the ingredients of national security and that national security trumps
law. In the United States democracy takes a back seat to “national
security,” a prerogative of the executive branch of government.
National
security is where the executive branch hides its crimes against law,
both domestic and international, its crimes against the Constitution,
its crimes against innocent citizens both at home and abroad, and its
secret agendas that it knows that the American public would never
support.
“National security” is the cloak that the executive branch uses to make certain that the US government is unaccountable.
Without
accountable government there is no civil liberty and no democracy
except for the sham voting that existed in the Soviet Union and now
exists in the US.
There
have been periods in US history, such as President Lincoln’s war to
prevent secession, World War I, and World War II, when accountable
government was impaired. These were short episodes of the Constitution’s
violation, and the Constitution was reinstated in the aftermath of the
wars. However, since the Clinton regime, the accountability of
government has been declining for more than two decades, longer than the
three wars combined.
In
law there is the concept of adverse possession, popularly known as
“squatters’ rights.” A non-owner who succeeds in occupying a piece of
property or some one else’s right for a certain time without being
evicted enjoys the ownership title conveyed to him. The reasoning is
that by not defending his rights, the owner showed his disinterest and
in effect gave his rights away.
Americans
have not defended their rights conveyed by the US Constitution for the
duration of the terms of three presidents. The Clinton regime was not
held accountable for its illegal attack on Serbia. The Bush regime was
not held accountable for its illegal invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq.
The Obama regime was not held accountable for its renewed attack on
Afghanistan and its illegal attacks on Libya, Pakistan, and Yemen, and
by its proxies on Syria.
We
also have other strictly illegal and unconstitutional acts of
government for which the government has not been held accountable. The
Bush regimes’ acts of torture, indefinite detention, and warrantless
spying, and the Obama regime’s acts of indefinite detention, warrantless
spying, and murder of US citizens without due process. As the Obama
regime lies through its teeth, we have no way of knowing whether torture
is still practiced.
If
these numerous criminal acts of the US government spread over the terms
of three presidents pass into history as unchallenged events, the US
government will have acquired squatters’ rights in lawlessness. The US
Constitution will be, as President George W. Bush is reported to have
declared, “a scrap of paper.”
Lawlessness
is the hallmark of tyranny enforced by the police state. In a police
state law is not a protector of rights but a weapon in the hands of
government. [see Roberts & Stratton, The Tyranny of Good
Intentions] The accused has no recourse to the accusation, which does
not require evidence presented to a court. The accused is guilty by
accusation alone and can be shot in the back of the head, as under
Stalin, or blown up by a drone missile, as under Obama.
As
a person aware of the long struggle against the tyrannical state, I
have been amazed and disheartened by the acceptance not only by the
insouciant American public, but also by law schools, bar associations,
media, Congress and the Supreme Court of the executive branch’s claim to
be above both law and the US Constitution.
As
Lawrence Stratton and I show in our book about how the law was lost,
liberals and conservatives chasing after their favorite devils, such as
child abusers and drug pushers, and prosecutors, judges, and police
devoted to conviction and not to justice, have gradually eroded over
time the concept of law as a protection of the innocent, With the
atmosphere of threat created by 9/11, the final destruction of the
protective features of law was quickly achieved in the name of making us
safe from terrorists.
The fact that we are no longer safe from our own government did not register.This is how liberty was lost, and America with it.
Can liberty be regained? Probably not, but there is a chance if Americans have the necessary strength of character. The chance comes from the now known fact that the neoconservative Bush/Cheney regime took America and its puppet states to war in Afghanistan and Iraq entirely on the basis of lies. As all evidence proves, these wars were not the results of mistaken intelligence. They were the products of intentional lies.
The
weapons inspectors told the Bush regime that there were no weapons of
mass destruction in Iraq. Despite this known fact, the Bush regime sent
Secretary of State Colin Powell to the UN with fabricated evidence to
convince the world that Saddam Hussein had “weapons of mass destruction”
and was a threat to the world. Even if such weapons had existed in
Iraq, many countries have them, including the US and Israel, and the
presence of weapons does not under the Nuremberg Laws justify unprovoked
aggression against the possessor. Under the Nuremberg Laws, unprovoked
military aggression is a war crime, not the possession of weapons that
many countries have. The war crime was committed by the US and its
“coalition of the willing,” not by Saddam Hussein.
As
for the invasion of Afghanistan, we know from the last video of Osama
bin Laden in October 2001, attested by experts to be the last appearance
of a man dying of renal failure and other diseases, that he declared
that he had no responsibility for 9/11 and that Americans should look to
their own government. We know as a reported fact that the Afghan
Taliban offered to turn over Osama bin Laden to Washington if the Bush
regime would provide the evidence that indicated bin Laden was
responsible. The Bush regime refused to hand over the (non-existent)
evidence and, with support of the corrupt and cowardly Congress and the
presstitute media, attacked Afghanistan without any legal justification.
Remember, the FBI has stated publicly that it has no evidence that
Osama bin Laden was responsible for 9/11 and that that is why the crimes
for which the FBI wanted bin Laden did not include responsibility for
the 9/11 attack.
The war propaganda campaign was
well prepared. Yellow ribbon decals were handed out for cars proclaiming
“support the troops.” In other words, anyone who raises the obvious
questions is not supporting the troops. Still today insouciant
Americans sport these decals on their cars unaware that what they are
supporting are the murder of foreign women, children and village elders,
the death and physical and mental maiming of American soldiers, and the
worldwide destruction of the reputation of the United States, with
America’s main rival, China, now calling for a “de-Americanized world.”
A country with a population as insouciant as Americans is a country in which the government can do as it pleases.
Now
that we have complete proof that the criminal Bush regime took our
country to wars in Afghanistan and Iraq solely on the basis of
intentional lies, how can the legal institutions, the courts, the
American people possibly tolerate the Obama regime’s ignoring of the
obvious crimes? How can America simply accept Obama’s statement that we
mustn’t look back, only move ahead? If the US government, which has
committed the worst crimes of our generation, cannot be held accountable
and punished, how can federal, state, and local courts fill up American
prisons with people who smoked pot and with people who did not
sufficiently grovel before the police state.
Doubtless,
the Obama regime, should it obey the law and prosecute the Bush
regime’s crimes, would have to worry about being prosecuted for its own
crimes, which are just as terrible. Nevertheless, I believe that the
Obama regime could survive if it put all the blame on the Bush regime,
prosecuted the Bush criminals, and desisted from the illegal actions
that it currently supports. This would save the Constitution and US
civil liberty, but it would require the White House to take the risk
that by enforcing US law, US law might be enforced against its own
illegal and unconstitutional acts by a succeeding regime.
The
Bush/Cheney/John Yoo neoconservative regime having got rid of US law,
no doubt the Obama regime thinks it is best to leave the situation as it
is, rid of law.
Without
accountability, America is finished. Not only will Americans live in a
police state with no civil liberties, but the rest of the world is
already looking at America with a jaundiced eye. The US is being
reconstituted as an authoritarian state. All it takes is one failure of
accountability for the police state to become entrenched, and we have
had numerous failures of accountability. Does anyone really believe
that some future government is going to make restitution to persecuted
truth-tellers, such as Bradley Manning, Julian Assange, and Edward
Snowdon, as was done for Japanese Americans?
Now
that we know for a certain fact that the invasions of Afghanistan and
Iraq were based on propaganda and lies, Congress and the world media
should demand to know what was the real secret agenda. What are the real
reasons for which Afghanistan and Iraq were invaded?
No truthful explanation for these wars exists.
Paul
O’Neill, the Bush regime’s first Treasury Secretary, is on public
record stating that at the very first cabinet meeting, long prior to
9/11, the agenda was a US attack on Iraq.
In other words, the Bush regime’s attack on Iraq had nothing whatsoever to do with 9/11.
What
was the Bush regime’s secret agenda, kept secret by the Obama regime,
that required an illegal, war criminal, attack on a sovereign country,
an action for which officials of Hitler’s government were executed?
What is the real purpose of Washington’s wars?
It
is totally and completely obvious that the wars have nothing to do with
protecting Americans from terrorism. If anything, the wars stir up and
create terrorists. The wars create hatred of America that never
previously existed. Despite this, America is free of terrorists attacks
except for the ones orchestrated by the FBI. What the fabricated
“terror threat” has done is to create a thorough-going domestic police
state that is unaccountable.
Americans need to
understand that they have lost their country. The rest of the world
needs to recognize that Washington is not merely the most complete
police state since Stalinism, but also a threat to the entire world. The
hubris and arrogance of Washington, combined with Washington’s huge
supply of weapons of mass destruction, make Washington the greatest
threat that has ever existed to all life on the planet. Washington is
the enemy of all humanity.
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