"Homeland Insecurity" by Doug Valentine

[Hakki Alacakaptan]

Homeland Insecurity:
Phoenix, Chaos, The Enterprise,
and The Politics of Terror In America
http://www.counterpunch.org/homeland1.html
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Valentine says a National Review article by Iran-Contra gang member Michael
Ledeen announces the shape of things to come.
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(...)
Defending our homeland will not be an easy task, according to Michael
Ledeen, a former counter-terror expert in the Reagan Administration's State
Department and National Security Council. In a 1 October article for the
National Review OnLine, Ledeen said the difficulty will be getting the
law-enforcement and intelligence agencies "to coordinate better with one
another."
Ledeen defines this organizational problem as ideological, and he
specifically blames the Clintons, "for failing to properly organize our
nation's security apparatus."
(...)
"This is time for the old motto, "kill them all, let God sort 'em out." New
times require new people with new standards," Ledeen asserts. "The entire
political (italics added) world will understand it and applaud it. And it
will give Tom Ridge a chance to succeed, and us to prevail."
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Hardly surprising, coming from Ronnie's counter-terror expert, who is simply
describing his own MO.
Valentine gives us a long, scary account of Phoenix, COINTELPRO,
Iran-Contra, etc., to make the point that the US right has a fascist agenda.
He concludes that "unpresident" Bush has overnight become the leader for a
nation under attack - even for Chelsea Clinton, one may add - and that a
fascist state is being assembled around this pathetic Fuhrer.
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The "new times" means a society in which the organizing principle is terror.
The "new people" are those who take internal security seriously enough to
impose the "new standards," which allow military tribunals to order summary
executions and torture here in America, when necessary, and mass murder
anywhere in the world there are thought to be terrorists, as is happening in
Afghanistan right now.
(...)
Internationally the story isn't any prettier. Bush's ambassador to the
United Nations, John Negroponte, has stated that America must attack more
and more countries. Like other terrorists in the Bush Administration,
Negroponte is well suited to this task. As U.S. ambassador to Honduras under
Reagan, he funded that particular right wing regime's most notorious death
squads, Battalion 316.

In the name of anti-terrorism, the illegitimate Bush Administration can be
expected to revitalize this practice worldwide, training torturers and
tyrants to wage "global counter-terrorism" against any nation that harbors
suspected terrorists, or critics of U.S. foreign policy. And any connection
you have to these foreign enemies, even if it is merely sympathy for the
Palestinians, subjects you to imprisonment, loss of livelihood, and worst of
all, forfeiture of your sense of humor.

That's right. You can't even make fun of the situation anymore. Which is,
when you think of it, perfectly in keeping with out time honored
Judaic-Christian ethic.

Here at home, through the Office of Homeland Security, we will endure more
political and psychological warfare, more black and gray propaganda, and
more deceit and disinformation than any society on earth before. We're told
we must become new people in a brave new world, where indefinite detention,
torture and summary execution of our suspected enemies will make us free.
(...)
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Is Valentine's crystal-gazing convincing? Are we really headed for a
Starship Troopers world with terrorists instead of space bugs?

Hakki