You
can fool all the people some of the time,
and some of the people all the time,
but you cannot fool all the people all the time.
— Abraham
Lincoln
The
Big Lie Persists. I am talking here about the first lie
out of Bush's mouth immediately following 911 when he said
that the reason we were attacked was because the terrorists
hate our freedoms and our Democracy. This is the big lie and
it persists, and he hasn't stopped lying since.
In fact, the reason we were attacked was explained very
clearly by Osama bin Laden in an interview that he had with
Peter Arnett of CNN news in March of 1997. http://www.robert-fisk.com/usama_interview_cnn.htm
The
aggression and war crimes committed by the US to which bin
Laden refers in that interview is confirmed by many reporters,
historians, and commentators but the list of crimes committed
by the US goes far beyond those to which bin Laden alludes.
911 was what Chalmers Johnson refers to as
"Blowback." "Blowback" is the response of
other nations or organizations to the crimes that the US
'secretly' commits against citizens of those other countries.
I call these crimes 'secret' because they are routinely
obfuscated from public view by propaganda, lies, and
disinformation perpetrated by our government with help from
mainstream media.
Of
course the crimes can't be hidden from the people who are its
victims or from foreign media sources, so the truth eventually
comes out, although sometimes it can take years before it
becomes common knowledge in America.
"Blowback" specifically refers to attacks against
the US for which citizens have no reference point or logical
framework for understanding them. Citizens are therefore
easily misled by US propaganda and nonsensical reasoning like
that offered by Bush immediately after the attack on the twin
towers.
We were not attacked because we are a free, wonderful and
loving people as Bush would have us believe. We were attacked
because the United States is addicted to war, addicted to
committing crimes of international terror against peoples of
other lands in order to get them to hand over to US interests,
their resources, their cheap labor, or their sovereignty.
And now that someone decided to strike back against US
treachery on behalf of some of the victims... we are told that
the evil doers are at our doorstep. Well my goodness, what a
surprise.
It is a sad commentary on the state of American statesmanship
that none of our elected officials or mainstream news agencies
has the courage, or the integrity, to name this great lie for
what it is. We would have nothing to fear from so called
'terrorists' if We the People, acting through our elected
officials, would conduct ourselves—which is to say, conduct
our foreign affairs—as decent human beings.
The truth is, our foreign policy, contrary to popular belief,
probably has never been the pursuit of world peace; and today
our purpose clearly appears to be US domination over the
world's key resources no matter what the cost in human carnage
might be.
It is simply wrong to say that the United States is a free
country if its leaders believe the truth is too
unseemly to be consumed by ordinary citizens. In my view, you
are only really free if it is safe for you to tell the truth
and hear the truth... all the time... in whatever company you
are with. This administration considers telling the truth to
be an act of treason. Someone should explain to members of
Congress that just the opposite is true. If you are happy to
live in a box of lies and never seek to venture outside its
perimeter, you can, of course, blindly claim that you are
free, but that kind of freedom is really an unhappy illusion.
If you want to know why the treatment of depression is such a
major industry in this country, perhaps it's because it's our
society that is sick, and not so much the people who exhibit
the symptoms. Maybe it's the hypocrisy, the systemic
infidelity, and the lies that we hear and live with every day
that makes people sick.
Our kids are coming home from Iraq with severe mental illness.
It's not the people of Iraqi who made them sick. It's the
folks who sent them there with their lies and their treason
that made them sick.
If five years after 911, Americans still believe that we were
attacked or are in danger because we love freedom and
democracy, then Americans are living in a dream world... or
should I say an unfolding nightmare. We need to start telling
the truth. If we want to be safe, we will need to do our
homework. We will need to learn and then tell the truth about
our own history. We need to identify the lies and myths we
blindly accept and help propagate. And we will have to ask
ourselves if we have the courage to face the truth and deal
with it honorably and decently for the good of our country,
our community, and our immediate and extended human family.
So far, these lies have put our dignity, our wealth, and our
honor on the line. We are living on borrowed capital and
borrowed time. Many of our children have paid the price with
their lives, their limbs and their mental well-being. And it
is not even our own children who have suffered the most. Look
around... outside your little box... what do we look like to
all those people in far off places who have been cheated,
murdered, tortured, and defiled in our name?
Now the future of all children hangs in the balance.
We have seen the enemy and he is us. We need to make peace
with ourselves and the rest of the world. The only way to do
that is to start telling the truth.
http://www.gpln.com
http://www.gpln.com/childrenofiraq.htm
http://www.gpln.com/therealterrorists.htm
http://www.commondreams.org/views06/0404-30.htm
http://www.counterpunch.org/corseri04042006.html
http://www.westpointgradsagainstthewar.org
Return to
Commentaries
|