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Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace: How We Got to Be So Hated
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| Parent | Parent |
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| Title | Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace: How We Got to Be So Hated |
| ASIN | 156025405X -
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| Category | Opinion |
| Contributor | Craverguy |
| Last Modified | Craverguy - March 17, 2009 02:05pm |
| Description | The United States has been engaged in what the great historian Charles A. Beard called "perpetual war for perpetual peace." The Federation of American Scientists has catalogued nearly 200 military incursions since 1945 in which the United States has been the aggressor. In a series of penetrating and alarming essays, whose centerpiece is a commentary on the events of September 11, 2001 (deemed too controversial to publish until now), Gore Vidal challenges the comforting consensus following both September 11th and Timothy McVeigh's bombing of the federal building in Oklahoma City: these were simply the acts of "evil-doers."
"None of these explanations made sense, but our rulers for more than half a century have made sure that we are never to be told the truth about anything that our government has done to other people, not to mention our own. That our ruling junta might have seriously provoked McVeigh and Osama was never dealt with. We consumers don't need to be told the why of anything. Certainly those of us who are in the why-business have had a difficult time getting through the corporate-sponsored American media, so I thought it useful to describe here the various provocations on our side that drove both bin Laden and McVeigh to such terrible acts."
"The awesome physical damage Osama and company did to us is as nothing compared to the knock-out blow to our vanishing liberties: the Anti-Terrorism Act of 1996 combined with the recent request to Congress for additional special powers to wiretap without judicial order; to deport lawful permanent residents, visitors, and undocumented immigrants without due process." Could it be that the greatest victim of the September 11th terror attacks will be American liberty? "Once alienates," Vidal writes, "an 'unalienable right' is apt to be forever lost." |
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